The general manager of Manitoba Pork Council is calling on government, scientists and industry to set increased feed barley yields as a research priority.
Feed accounts for approximately 70 percent of the cost of producing hogs.
Manitoba Pork Council general manager Andrew Dickson told the Canadian Association of Farm Advisors 2010 Annual Manitoba Conference last week western Canada has an advantage in that two thirds of the grain fed to hogs is wheat and barley but the availability of barley is a concern.
In the past western Canada used to grow something like 10 million acres of barley and that acreage is dropping.
We’re probably down at about eight million acres now and the curve looks as though it’s going to go further down.
Compounding that is the fact that average yields for feed barley are simply not matching the rate of growth that we’re seeing in the corn industry in terms of productivity and so the cost of corn in the long run is to some extent being held down because of this huge ability of the corn breeders to improve yield per acre every year.
We need to get a real effort made by government and the research community in linking in with the feed industry and with producers to try and resolve this issue.
We’ve got to get the cost of our energy like starch and sugars and protein on a per pound basis per acre the same as our counterparts in the U.S. if we’re going to stay competitive in the long run.
Dickson notes difficulties in harvesting the U.S. corn crop combined with increased demand from ethanol and strong export demand have pushed up the cost of U.S. corn.
He says because barley prices have been holding a little lower than corn our producers might be able squeak through with somewhat lower costs than their American counterparts, at least in the short term.
Source: Farmscape.Ca
