The District Director for the Steinbach District with Farm Credit Canada says the financial world has a role to play in helping facilitate the construction of new hog finishing capacity in western Canada.
Over the past few weeks the first applications for permits, under the Pig Production Special Pilot Project Evaluation Protocol, for the construction of new hog production facilities have been received.
Barry Watson, the District Director for the Steinbach District with Farm Credit Canada, says FCC is working with industry to ensure financing is available.
Probably over the course of the last 8 or 10 years there’s been some fairly deep swings through the lows of the cycle and so there hasn’t been a lot of new activity as you know. I think today we are actively involved in discussions with industry to explore what could be done to try and get some expansion and some investment in new finishing capacity going.
We have had meetings with Manitoba Pork in Manitoba and I think those discussions are going on in similar capacities in other provinces as well. Part of the flow of the discussion is identifying what’s standing in the way today.
That centers around a couple of key topics, being there’s been a fair bit of volatility as far as the hog price goes and we’ve had some material changes in exchange rate through the last 8 or 10 years a couple of times and there’s been some fairly meaningful movement up and down on feed prices as well.
Depending on the timing of those challenges coming together it’s created some real challenges for the industry so, what can we do going forward and the financial world has a role to play in that. ~ Barry Watson – Farm Credit Canada
Watson acknowledges the recent activity level in terms of financing requests related to new hog barn construction at Farm Credit Canada has been fairly low.
