Limits on ag support payments to larger producers have led “directly” to Saskatchewan’s second largest pork producer filing for bankruptcy protection, according to the provincial pork development board.
SaskPork said in a release Wednesday that Stomp Pork Farms (SPF) filed to buy time to develop a new plan and restructure its debt with creditors, while maintaining business as usual in the near term.
Pork producers in Saskatchewan are now losing over $40 to $60 on every pig they produce, the board said, and while new federal and provincial safety nets help many to cope, the three major support programs “seriously disadvantage” the industry’s larger farms.
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“For example, the 2008 federal AgriStability program is expected to provide support payments of at least $30 per hog sold to most producers,” the board wrote. “Due to the limit of support to larger producers as a result of the caps, Stomp Pork Farms would receive less than $6 per pig sold.”
Thus, SPF and the other large operators that make up 60 per cent of the province’s pork production “are left with little or no support,” SaskPork said.
Larger operators pay “millions in uncapped taxes” each year and employ thousands of people in rural Saskatchewan, using “millions of bushels” of locally grown feed grain and supporting local rural businesses, the board noted.
Requests from the industry to remove caps from the current suite of farm support programs “have been ignored,” SaskPork wrote, noting letters sent March 14 to the provincial and federal agriculture ministers by several Saskatchewan livestock groups as well as by major producer Big Sky Farms, pork producer Olymel and Quebec’s hog farmer association.
SaskPork said it would be “unacceptable” for the lack of response to continue on this issue, as hog producers have “life-altering decisions” to make. “The time for waiting for the industry to heal itself is over.”
