Farmscape for November 14, 2011   (Episode 4006)

A director with Pork Chain Consulting says, while the cost of producing pork in Canada compare favorably with those in the rest of the world, there are areas where improvements can be made.

"Being the Best at Raising Pork" was discussed last week as part of Manitoba Pork Council's semi-annual pork industry meeting held in Steinbach and Portage la Prairie.

Bernie Peet, a director with Pork Chain Consulting, acknowledges, because the data set is a limited and various parameters may be calculated differently in different regions, accurately comparing pork production costs is a challenge but based on what we do know Canada compares very well in terms of cost of production.

Clip-Bernie Peet-Pork Chain Consulting:
Canadian producers have lower production costs than many other countries but unfortunately we receive a fairly low price relative to say Europe so in terms of margins I don't really think we do any better.

Yes, we have done better the last year or so but we had three really bad years with very low margins so we need to continue to battle away at improving efficiency at getting production costs down.

There's no doubt about that.

We are good at producing piglets and here in Manitoba there's an excellent reputation for breeding herd productivity.

There's still a lot that can be done there because we've seen huge advances in genetic potential for high litter size so there's still a lot to do there.

I would say one of the other areas where we could improve is feed efficiency.

I think we've been used to low feed costs for so long that even now that feed costs are a lot higher, we perhaps haven't done all the things we can do to improve feed efficiency.

Peet observes Canada has the advantage of a fairly high carcass weight so the total weight of pork produced per sow is also pretty high in Canada.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council