Pork producers need to take control of their industry

The hog industry did some major soul searching at the 32nd annual Pork Industry Symposium held the past couple days in Saskatoon. Presenters had a long list of the things wrong with the Canadian industry and an equally long list of proposed solutions. Laurent Pellerin, President of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and a hog producer from Quebec had just returned from a symposium on food security held by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. While the FAO is worried about feeding nine billion people in the world by 2050, Canada’s hog industry is in decline and Pellerin pointed out the irony of our producers being paid to exit the business. Jurgen Preugschas, Chair of the Canadian Pork Council and an Alberta hog producer told the symposium that we need to create and execute a differentiation strategy. He believes we can’t compete on a commodity basis with the U.S. given the high value of the Canadian dollar. That was a solution echoed by many presenters. Hog price are actually profitable in countries outside of North America. Within Canada, pork consumption is dropping and more than 20 per cent of the pork consumed is coming in from the U.S. I’m Kevin Hursh.