Seeking to calm what one major farm leader has called an “explosive” situation, Quebec Agriculture Minister Laurent Lessard today named longtime provincial civil servant Guy Coulombe as his representative for talks with stakeholders in the province’s pork industry.
Coulombe is to lead the discussions between the industry’s principal players and file a report for Lessard by March 3, the province announced in a release.
Through these talks, Lessard said, it will be possible to lay the foundations for development of the industry and allow it to remain one of the pillars of the agri-food sector and provincial economy.
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The industry has made clear it’s in need of some positive developments, in view of recent comments by Laurent Pellerin, president of the province’s leading farm group, l’Union des producteurs agricoles (UPA).
Quoted in the farmers’ paper La terre de chez nous at recent hearings of a provincial commission on the future of farming, Pellerin described the hog industry as a pot about to blow up, as hog farmers face a surplus of animals stemming from the recent closure of two Olymel slaughter plants in the province.
Pellerin said in early September that the surplus had already shown up in prices for slaughter hogs, which had dropped within that week from $139 to $124 per hundredweight.
