The president of the Canadian Pork Council suggests the long term viability of the Canadian pork industry will depend on its ability to extract a premium price for a premium product.
Thanks in part to substantial reductions in the North American swine herd in an effort to balance the supply of pork with demand live hog prices have shown dramatic improvement over the past few months.
Canadian Pork Council president Jurgen Preugschas says the general feeling among Canadian producers is much more positive and while the turn-around certainly has been significant it’s important to remember that in Canada our producers are at best breaking even.
I think, when we look long term, we again have to take a look at how are we going market our pork in Canada.
With the very low American dollar and our high Canadian dollar vis a vie the U.S. dollar our margins are much much tighter than what the Americans are so we need to continue to differentiate our product from the American product and a commodity product and garner a little bit extra value out of the very good pork that we sell.
It is recognized as probably the best in the world and we have to market it as such and ensure that some of that money flows down to the producer.
Otherwise our hog industry will continue to shrink.
Preugschas says even though the increase in hog prices has been significant the ability of producers to recover what was lost isn’t anywhere close to what’s required.
He says four months of profits don’t come close to making up four years of severe losses so, although they aren’t going deeper into debt, our producers are still in a difficult financial situation and are still a long way from being flush and back to where they were four years ago.
Source: Farmscape.Ca
