An eastern Manitoba livestock feed supplier says the key to the survival of Canada’s hog industry is restored profitability.
The Canadian pork industry has been financially devastated by three years of ongoing losses.
As part of a national pork industry restructuring plan Canada’s financial institutions are offering government backed loans to allow pork producers to consolidate existing debt and repay it over a 10 to 15 year period.
Ron Friesen, the vice president and general manager of Winnipeg based Eastman Feeds, says we need to see profitability for this industry to survive in Manitoba.
The industry still hasn’t corrected itself.
The price is still not there to recover from the losses that they have had in the last years.
Just adding more debt to these facilities or guaranteeing the financial institutions, that’s not really what this program is for is just to guarantee a bunch of banks that they get guaranteed by the government.
It’s there to bridge finance the farmers through this very difficult time.
However the pricing for the market animals still is not there to compensate the farmer for the losses that they received and currently the cash market is still not profitable.
However there are some signs that going forward in 2010 on the futures that there is some profit, 15 to 20 dollars, in pigs that could be locked in May, June, July and August of 2010.
However the input costs like soybean meal and corn continues to erode that profitability by going up.
Friesen is confident there is a better day coming and he encourages producers to take advantage of the programs being made available including the Canadian Hog Industry Loan Loss Reserve Program and Agristability.
Source: Farmscape.Ca
