Hams Marketing Services Co-op Inc. of Winnipeg, MB held four producer meetings across Western Canada in March and April namely one in Alberta, one in Saskatchewan and two in Manitoba.  
Bill Alford the general manager said it’s great to be back out there with the meetings once again with the last one held over two years ago.  
“The tone overall, even though you hear the word inflation everywhere you go, hog prices are up, producers had a short-grain crop, so it’s pretty tight margins nonetheless. But I think everybody is pretty optimistic, much more so than two years ago, that’s for sure.” 
In painting a picture for producers at these meetings, it’s about the last six months to a year in a constant chaining industry. The movement of hogs from Eastern Canada to Olymel’s plant in Red Deer, AB has stopped. Olymel has shut down some kill space out east to balance the supply and demand with further processing abilities or labour. 
Conclusion: a long cold winter with near record-breaking snow in Manitoba had its disruptions; COVID mixed. Heading into the spring shackle space in Canada is tight adding to the labour situation where the shackle space with the packers is lining up more with the supply.  
“Our motivation is to put money into producer’s pockets through putting some value out there with services, risk management offering fixed forward pricing programs for hogs and other services. As a result, it’s attracting more producers. 
It’s tough because “They ain’t making any new hog producers.”  
With a slogan strength in numbers Hams Marketing is better off as a bigger group to negotiate and offer value and services to put money into the producer’s pockets.   
“The hog marketing co-op rebated 50 cents a hog last year, and that’s been 50 cents or more for five years running, so it’s successful. That’s a good measure to show producers, and again, they see value beyond just getting a rebate.” 
At these meetings, Tyler Fulton, the director of risk management with Hams Marketing Services told pork producers to focus on margins rather than the price of hogs or feed as they make their forward contracting decisions. 
The latest U.S. Department of Agriculture’s quarterly hogs and pigs report indicated higher than expected reductions in hog numbers, including an approximately two percent decline in the number of pigs kept for breeding, indicating tighter supplies. 
“We continue to see new highs almost every day on the corn market while protein meal prices are only marginally off the highs.”  
For perspective, the September corn futures are trading at close to 7.25 per bushel and there’s no indication of it turning around any time soon. 
The trend is decisively higher and from a global perspective, feedstocks will likely stay high in light of the conflict in Ukraine and the impact it has on their production. 
They export approximately 35 percent of all the tradable global stocks. So that makes a significant difference when there’s obvious concern over the forecast production in that area, so it continues to drive higher. 
Hog profitability for hog producers is a challenging thing and a moving target. There’s great volatility in both the hog and feed input market so producers need to focus on the timing and approach their hedging decisions based on their margins, not solely based on the price of hogs or strictly the cost of feed. 
While a volatile business climate, producers can still secure some profitability depending on the individual operation. 
Alford said the co-op profile has Manitoba origin hogs at a million hogs a year, 300 thousand and change for Saskatchewan, and 200 thousand and change for Alberta for a total of 1.7 million, just a shade under hogs marketed through the co-op.  
“That said producers staying in the industry are slowly expanding, renovating, increasing their numbers to keep up. So, it’s growing, but very, very tempered growth.” 
Alford said like every other business, it’s essential to watch the costs closely because there’s no cheap feed anymore. 
“We expect everything to rise with inflation, what have you, for well into 2023, likely. Hog farming would be no different and prices are well above normal. They’re historically at the top, but the margins are average, considering the high input costs.” •
— By Harry Siemens