The vice chair of the Canadian Pork Council says, to be effective in helping Canada’s pork producers ride out the economic crisis being caused by high feed costs, government programs will need to be adjusted.
In August a government industry task team was struck to assess the challenges facing the pork sector as a result of high feed costs and low hog prices.
Last week federal agriculture minister Gerry Ritz announced, to avoid possible countervail action by the United States, governments will rely on existing programs such as AgriInvest and the Advance Payments Program to help Canada’s pork producers make it through to spring when profitability is expected to improve.
Canadian Pork Council vice-chair Rick Bergmann says, to be effective, these programs will need some adjustments.
There was some limited uptakes on some of the programs that the government has developed over the years, programs like the APP for example.
As we drilled down into that to review why, it’s industry’s opinion that that program is a tough program to bring value to farms.
Not all farms are able or eligible to acquire help through those programs.
That’s certainly the finding that came out of the task force.
We met, as the Canadian industry, at our annual meeting of the Canadian Pork Council.
It was reiterated very very strongly to our executive of CPC that the programs that are in place right now are not at all providing the help required to get over the troubled waters that we’re in.
Bergmann says the drought has put the industry way off side in terms where the cost of production should be and now the infrastructure is in jeopardy because of that event and the fact that producers are not able to take advantage of some of the programs in place.
