By Bruce Cochrane.
A Marketing Rep with h@ms Marketing Services says the construction of new finishing barns in Manitoba would allow more of the weanlings currently being shipped to the United States to be grown and processed in Manitoba.
H@ms Marketing Services acts on behalf of pork producers in western Canada providing slaughter hogs to western Canadian pork processing plants.
Andy Cardy, a Marketing Representative with h@ms, says Maple Leaf Foods faces the biggest shortfall.
Andy Cardy-h@ms Marketing Services:
They are actively looking for new hogs.
They have a very vested interest in getting those hogs to market to get their plant back up to capacity.
As we know Saskatchewan has never had an interruption in expansion where Manitoba has and we're hoping to get Manitoba back on stream with some extra barns coming which would bring the freight down for Maple Leaf and just get some very much needed stimulation in western Manitoba.
Finishing barns would be first and foremost.
They are what's needed to take weanlings that we potentially have now that are going out of province or out of the country for finishing in the U.S.
If we could stall some of that we would have some of those pigs already in place for finishing barns but, to get those finishing barns and even intermediate barns like the grower barns or the starter to bring those up, those are what's needed immediately.
If that could start to happen, we could attract some of those pigs to stay in Manitoba.
With the weaker dollar in Canada, or in Manitoba in particular, going across the line is very attractive for weanling guys right now and it's vary hard to compete with that dollar so it's kind of an uphill battle.
There's lots of place to build those barns yet and Saskatchewan is very aggressive in looking for that to happen for their province so we're hopeful that we can see that change here too.
Cardy acknowledges it's not cheap to build a new barn but, while hog markets have softened slightly, they are still strong and he would like to see more value added processing remain in Manitoba.
Source: Farmscape