Farmscape for January 18, 2012   (Episode 4063)

The Chair of the Banff Pork Seminar Advisory Committee predicts population growth will challenge Canada's pork producers to expand production and improve efficiency to help meet an increased demand for food.

The 2012 Banff Pork Seminar is underway today, tomorrow and Friday.

The annual seminar has evolved into a national event focusing on the exchange of ideas and new information intended to allow pork producers to learn specifics about various facets of the industry from production to marketing.

Jim Haggins, the Chair of the Banff Pork Seminar Advisory Committee and Chair of Alberta Pork, says a growing population will challenge the Canadian pork industry to expand efficiency and expand production overall to provide the nutrition that will be needed.

Clip-Jim Haggins-Alberta Pork:
This year's theme is "Feeding Tomorrow's World."

As everyone's aware, with great fanfare, we hit seven billion people as a global population in early November of last year.

It's projected that that global population will expand to nine billion people by 2050.

That will create a great challenge to the major food producing countries in the world of which there are only five or six that do the majority of the food production throughout the world.

Most of our pork produced in Canada today is exported to various countries around the world, from the United States, throughout Asia, Europe, Russia, you name it, India.

In some of those developing countries it is foreseen that the majority of the increase in population is going to occur.

The Canadian industry has established excellent rapport with those countries at this point in time and we are looking for that rapport strengthening and therefor creating a greater demand for the high quality Canadian pork that is produced here.

Haggins says the Banff Pork Seminar is the largest pork industry event in Canada and has evolved into the gathering point nationally for industry stakeholders.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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