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In recent days two of Canada's largest pork producers, Humboldt, Saskatchewan based Big Sky Farms and Niverville, Manitoba based Puratone, have filed for bankruptcy protection citing high feed costs due to drought in the U.S. coupled with low hog prices.
Feed costs have been driven to a level that make it impossible for hog feeders to recover their costs, that has trickled down to weanling producers causing many of them to depopulate their sow herds and commercial lenders are backing away from the industry.
Keystone Agricultural Producers is calling for immediate intervention by the federal and provincial governments to address what's being described as the worst crisis in the pork industry in Canadian history. One of the proposed ideas was to have financing of 130 to 150 million dollars for the next six to nine months to help the farmers just get through this period of difficulty so that when profitability comes back to the market place they can rebound and continue to operate.
September 18, 2012 - FarmScape/Canada
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