Pork Producers Advised to Take Advantage of Strong Forward Pricing Options

Apr 05, 2021

The Director of Risk Management with HAMS Marketing Services is advising pork producers to consider pricing as much as 30 percent of their hog production through the spring, summer and early fall. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Hogs and Pigs Report for the first quarter of 2021, released last week, indicates U.S. hog numbers have declined about two and a half percent from year ago numbers, a higher decline than had been expected.

Tyler Fulton, the Director of Risk Management with HAMS Marketing Services, acknowledges strong pork demand domestically and on the export front is supportive of higher prices but demand remains an elusive thing to nail down in the context of the pandemic.

Clip-Tyler Fulton-HAMS Marketing Services:

We've just got so many moving parts and so many changes from the normal relationships that we normally rely on such as the amount of product flowing through food service like the restaurant business and the amount of product going direct into consumers homes for home consumption so it's really kind of disrupted the normal supply chains.

That said, evidence still suggests that demand is really good. We've seen exceptional consumption and generally improving prices over the course of the last six months. That in a domestic market combined with what has been really strong demand from China continues to support the idea of higher prices but, arguably, what solves high prices is high prices. At some point there'll be diminishing positive effects from strong demand just because the prices are getting so high that it will start to ration off some of that demand.

Fulton says hog prices look really good through the spring, summer and early fall time frames so he encourages producers to look at pricing as much as 30 percent of their production through that period. Beyond that, he believes, we can still expect some higher prices into the fall as those months still don't represent a profit and he doesn't expect a lot of downside potential in the current market context.

Source : Farmscape

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”