It’s disappointing the Manitoba government isn’t doing more to help hog producers in the province.
Last week, the NDP government led by premier Greg Selinger rejected a program designed to stabilize incomes for the province’s 700 hog producers.
The province is going through financial hard times at present, and to cope the government has slashed spending, ordered a zero wage increase policy for civil servants and cut support for school taxes, among other austerity measures. So it could be just a case of bad timing. It can’t be seen to be offering loan guarantees for hog farmers while other sectors are forced to take cuts.
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However, people in the hog industry may find that tough to swallow. They are used to this sort of treatment by a Winnipeg-focused government that has in the past behaved as though it sees the hog industry as an annoyance rather than a economic stimulant and food provider.
Last week, the Manitoba Pork Council received the bad news that the government would not support its plan for a stabilization program. It would provide farmers with up to $75 million in loans from a government backed line of credit. It would be short-term money, which farmers would repay through a $5 per head checkoff when their operations become profitable again.
The program was to be self-funded by farmers and did not involve subsidies. Similar stabilization programs are not normally viewed as trade distorting, and it was unlikely to cause conflicts with Canada’s trading partners.
The province’s risk exposure was limited to outright hog farm bankruptcies.
By rejecting the pork council’s proposal, the government has sent a message to the industry and potential investors that it has little faith in the hog industry’s future.
This is not the first time the provincial NDP has failed the pork sector.
In the period leading up to the 2011 provincial election, the NDP openly vilified the hog industry as a polluter and issued a ban on hog barn expansions. It did so even though the industry is a minor contributor to the Lake Winnipeg phosphorus problem, responsible for 1.5 percent of phosphorus entering the lake, according to the Lake Winnipeg Stewardship Board.
It was action born out of political opportunism rather than solutions. The NDP could be seen by its largely urban supporters to be doing something about the problem while putting the burden on voters who were unlikely to support the NDP anyway.
There is too little political support for the sector outside of those areas where hog farming actually occurs, or at least not enough to make it a concern for the government.
That may yet prove to be a miscalculation. The hog industry has been hit by a barrage of problems lately:
- U.S. country-of-origin labelling, which has cost the sector billions in lost exports.
- Ractopamine bans in China and Russia, which will further damage exports.
- An industry-wide shift to renovate barns to open stall housing.
- High feed prices.
Without assistance beyond what’s available in existing programs such as Growing Forward 2, many in the hog industry are beginning to toll the death knell for province’s small, independent producers.
Without them, the hog sector will have to depend more on the corporate farms and Hutterite colonies, which are large enough to withstand the downturn.
There are now also fears that large packers in Brandon and Neepawa will be forced to issue layoffs if hog supplies dwindle too far.
It would have been a modest show of support for the province to extend loan guarantees to an industry worth $750 million annually and 13,000 jobs in the province, according to Manitoba Pork. It’s a shame the opportunity was missed.
