Manitoba’s provincial government will not back a hog stabilization program proposed by the Manitoba Pork Council.
“We’re very disappointed by the decision,” said council chairman Karl Kynoch, who anticipates more producers will exit the pork industry as a result.
“The only good thing is that now producers know that they are on their own and that helps them make decisions going forward,” he said in an interview Thursday after the council announced the decision.
The now-rejected program would have seen the province act as a guarantor for cash loans provided by financial institutions and administered by the council.
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Kynoch said the province wouldn’t have had to pay out any funds unless a sizeable number of operations went bankrupt, defaulting on their loans.
The loans were to be repaid by a mandatory $5 levy applied to all hogs sold in the province.
The chairman said the council had gone through nearly a dozen options before presenting this plan to the government.
“Basically at the end of the day this is what we came up with, so I don’t know where we will go from here,” said Kynoch, a producer at Baldur, about 100 km southeast of Brandon.
No provincial spokesperson was immediately available for comment Thursday.
The proposed stabilization program was intended to soften the burden of skyrocketing corn prices, pummelling producers already hurt by H1N1 influenza concerns and U.S. mandatory country-of-origin labeling (COOL).
Cuts to the federal/provincial AgriStability program in 2012 have diminished hog producers’ financial resiliency as well, Kynoch said.
Pork producers are also facing pressure when it comes to production practices.
“Hog farmers are working hard every day to provide Canadian consumers a nutritious, safe and affordable food supply,” Jean-Guy Vincent, chairman of the Canadian Pork Council, said in a separate release Thursday.
“At the same time, we have seen recent announcements by foodservice operations and grocery stores outlining new purchasing and sourcing requirements that will have repercussions at a farm level.”
Those announcements regard the phasing out of sow gestation stalls, which the Manitoba council estimates will cost producers $600 per animal.
— Shannon VanRaes is a reporter for the Manitoba Co-operator in Winnipeg.
Related stories:
Kostyshyn pressed at KAP AGM…, Feb. 6, 2013
Olymel joins move back from gestation crates, March 22, 2013
Tim Hortons expects stall-free pork by 2022, April 4, 2013
Man. hog farmers pledge sow stall phase-out, March 24, 2011
