The Canadian Pork Council yesterday joined six other national hog farmer groups in calling for “immediate lifts” in farmer returns and wholesale and retail pork prices.
Speaking from the World Pork Conference in Nanjing, China, the CPC and farmer groups from Britain, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand and South Africa said their farmer members are now carrying “substantial losses” on every hog produced and that “there is already a large number of producers leaving the industry and more will follow.”
The groups noted feed costs, which they said represent more than 70 per cent of pork production costs, as the most significant issue they face.
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“Worldwide grain prices have more than doubled as a result of poor harvests associated with difficult climatic conditions, but the most significant impact has been caused by the massive growth in demand for grain to produce biofuels,” the groups wrote in a press release, “and in many countries there are significant biofuel subsidies which are further fueling this demand.”
Any gains farmers can make in efficiency in the short term will “fall far short of what is required to stop the significant losses occurring,” they said.
The groups said they saw one of two scenarios unfolding, the first being a “significant drop in (hog) production worldwide due to producers exiting the industry, followed by a dramatic increase in wholesale and retail prices, well above current levels,” as has been seen in China over the past year.
The second scenario was for farmers to work with consumers, the food service sector and retailers to increase prices paid to producers now, so as to maintain hog production and less of a need for a major increase in wholesale and retail prices in the medium term.
Provincial hog farmers’ groups from coast to coast have reported similarly dire straits in recent weeks. Martin Porskamp, an Annapolis Valley hog farmer and chairman of Pork Nova Scotia, was quoted by CBC News yesterday as saying “I’m tired physically and emotionally, and I don’t want to do this anymore…It’s no fun.”
Nova Scotia is down to its last 38 hog farmers, from about 100 in 2006, CBC reported.
