Sask Pork AGM Highlights Economic Contributions of Saskatchewan Pork Production

Dec 16, 2024

An assessment of the economic impact of pork production in Saskatchewan shows the province's pork sector contributes over 500 million dollars annually to the provincial and national gross domestic product and generates about 46 hundred jobs across Canada. One of the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board's larger projects this year was an economic impact study conducted by Serecon that highlighted the significant contributions that pork producers in Saskatchewan make to the economy and the significant number of people that are employed in the industry.

Sask Pork General Manager Mark Ferguson told those on hand in Swift Current for Sask Pork's 2024 Annual General Meeting the study outlines the economic impact of Saskatchewan’s pork sector on GDP, jobs, labour income and tax revenue at both the provincial and national levels.

Quote-Mark Ferguson-Saskatchewan Pork Development Board:

What we wanted to do was measure the direct, indirect and induced economic impact, so it's not just the jobs directly within the industry, so producing pigs but also some of the spinoff benefits and jobs that occur outside of the industry but wouldn’t be there if our industry didn't exist. That's things like processing, service providers, restaurants in communities with hog barns.

That's kind of the bigger economic picture. What the study found was that Saskatchewan's pork industry generates about 560 million dollars in GDP within the province of Saskatchewan and when you extend it out further it's close to 800 million nationally.The pork industry provides over three thousand full time jobs in Saskatchewan and about 46 hundred in Canada so it's a big employer.

We also have significant labor income as a result of that and municipal, provincial and federal taxes paid so this is an industry that is a big economic driver in the province.

Ferguson suggests it's important for policy makers in government at all levels to understand how big this business is in the province and it's important for producers to understand the impact they have on the economy.

Source : Farmscape.ca

Video: Selling Hay for 40 Years: Fritz Trauttmansdorff, Dunlea Farms

Fritz Trauttmansdorff came to Canada from Austria in 1980, bought a 45-cow dairy farm at Jerseyville, and within two years had more hay than he knew what to do with. He sold the quota in 1986, went debt-free, and built a hay business that has kept some of the same customers for forty years. Today Dunlea Farms runs about 2,500 acres — roughly 600 of it hay, the rest IP soybeans and grain corn — and Fritz makes the case that hay isn't the crop you grow when grain doesn't work. It's the crop that makes the grain work.

"If you grow corn, soybeans and wheat, you're on a three-wheeler. If you put hay in the rotation, you're on a four-wheeler."

WHAT WE COVER • Why the hay market moves independently of the Chicago Board — and what that does for farm-level risk
• The real cost of a mistake: five bushels in grain, versus the whole crop in hay
• Getting a second job out of the same iron — planting tractors that mow all summer, tillage tractors that bale
• How a grain farmer can get hay into the rotation without buying a single piece of hay equipment
• Drilling Timothy in the fall and double-cropping soybeans into it the next June
• What it actually takes to go all-in: roughly 500 acres, good sheds, and a baler you didn't buy used
• Local, regional and international hay markets — and choosing which one you're building for
• Why 40-year customer relationships are the asset, not the equipment