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Prairie Swine Centre is an affiliate of the University of Saskatchewan


Prairie Swine Centre is grateful for the assistance of the George Morris Centre in developing the economics portion of Pork Insight.

Financial support for the Enterprise Model Project and Pork Insight has been provided by:



Author(s): Al Mussell and Kevin Grier
Publication Date: January 1, 2007
Reference: Proceedings of the 2007 Manitoba Swine Seminar
Country: Canada

Summary:

A reassessment of the development of issues facing the competitiveness of the Canadian pork industry is presented in this paper. Natural factors such as grains are present. An example of this is Iowa corn in the USA has a far larger yield than Alberta barley, and Canadian grain prices are increasing. The result of such combined factors is that Canada has become a high-cost feeding region in comparison to the USA. Labour is also discussed in the respect of wages being far too high from the influence of the Alberta oil industry (~ $17.00), as well as Manitoba and Ontario (~ $12 to $13.00) being still higher than Midwest USA (~ $10 to $11.00). Labour shortage is brought on by the aging workforce and less youth enrolling in agriculture related careers, and the inability to compete with other industry sectors (primarily in Western Canada, but across Canada as well). This is resulting in farm operators working ridiculous hours (80 to 90 per week), which will eventually lead to cutbacks in production in order to reduce stress. Lack of labour is also significantly impacting the Canadian pork packing industry due to the fact that worker shortage has forced some big name packers such as Olymel and Maple Leaf Foods to discontinue or even be unable to begin a second slaughter shift. This results in an immense loss of revenue in the hog industry. Larger packer plant size in the USA results in cheaper cost of slaughter per head. Canada packing plants see roughly $5.00 more per hog than USA due to the smaller plant size and the lack of a double shift. This entire paper goes into much more detail as to how the hog industry from producer to packer has undergone changes that impact economics, exports, and competitiveness.

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