The President and CEO of the Saskatoon based Prairie Swine Centre suggests, by focusing on feed, labor and utility costs, pork producers have an opportunity to improve the profitability of their operations.
The Prairie Swine Centre’s annual series of spring producer meetings kicks off this coming Tuesday in Stratford, Ontario and over the next couple of months will travel to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Lethbridge and Red Deer, Alberta and Portage La Prairie and Niverville, Manitoba.
The focus is helping producers improve the bottom line of their operations and the long term sustainability of the pork industry.
Prairie Swine Centre President and CEO Lee Whittington notes the Prairie Swine Centre is entering its 20th year of operation and has been holding spring producer meetings almost every spring since 1993.
The research scientists like to use this as our kick-off series of meetings for the year and so each of the research scientists will be bringing their newest information.
We’ve asked them to focus on again the bottom line, how do we keep pork producers in Canada competitive.
We’re actually just barely above the cost of production on most farms today and that’s primarily because of increased feed prices.
We are expecting our pork prices to continue to rise at least through until the end of June and so that’s a good sign.
The three areas that pork producers can typically make their greatest gains is in feed, labor and utilities.
Those are the three big variable costs that every pork producer faces and so we hope to be able to touch on all three of those during the various presentations.
Whittington expects this year’s meetings to be of interest to pork producers, veterinarians, barn ventilation experts, bankers, the pork industry’s whole value chain because improving the bottom line often involves more than one discipline and more than one supplier helping to make it happen on the farm.
For more information on the annual spring producer meetings or to register visit the Prairie Swine Centre’s web site at prairieswine.com.
