Hog farmers grappled with their plight during the Manitoba Pork Council’s annual meeting held April 10 in Winnipeg.
The following are comments from discussion about a resolution that called on the entire pork industry to meet to find a way to preserve the pig production base on which the rest of the supply chain relies.
“Most feel this just can’t continue. The lack of profitability we’ve had since 2008 and the losses that we’ve had in the last year, many producers are reaching the point where they feel they can no longer continue.”
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“We need to start addressing the structural problems that this industry has. We need to find more ways to get value back to the producer. I think we need to find ways to make this a profitable business again.”
“Many producers are near the tipping point. I think we should do it fairly quickly.”
“Their equity’s running out. It’s at a very critical crossroads.”
“If we don’t resolve some of this, we will lose another round of producers.”
“I’ll tell you, the government’s not here to help us, so I think the industry is going to have to take charge of it. We’re going to have to figure this thing out on our own and figure it out together.”
“The current method of pricing pigs in Canada is outdated and needs to be revisited. There’s a significant differential between Canadian and U.S. prices that when the current method of pricing was developed was largely offset by a very weak Canadian dollar.”
“Simply put, hog producers need and deserve more revenue from the hogs they are producing.”
“(Packers like Maple Leaf, HyLife and Olymel) are certainly part of the solution, but not the entire solution. There are other parts of the supply chain, specifically the retailer, that need to be included in the solution. They need to be committed to buying and selling Canadian pork and possibly convinced to share some of their meat margins.”
“Sometimes as producers we just sit back and watch things happen.”
“Every sector has to take it serious. As the saying goes, a chain is as strong as the weakest link. We’re all interdependent on each other. And I think we all care. There are power and synergies and we need to move ahead with this and if it takes more than one meeting, we have to have more than one meeting. But we can’t give up in trying to establish something that down the road is going to be good for the industry.”
“Although society, although our province, our country, our government benefit so greatly from the things that we do, right now there is no level of involvement that they would want to participate in.”
