Behind the Lines - October 2009

Thursday, October 1, 2009

For those of us with a long history in the pork business, calls for supply management in times of crisis are nothing new. When the chatter began last spring, a producer told one of our writers it was a sign that the market was at the bottom. That was well before prices fell by another 15 to 18 cents per kilogram to less than a dollar in mid-summer.

Although it probably wouldn't be much help to our ailing industry, it might be an interesting exercise for an economics class to calculate whether pork producers and Canadian taxpayers would be better or worse off now if producers had opted for supply management when the last big push was on back in the early 1980s.

When things are broken at home, it's only natural to look for greener pastures elsewhere and Quebec often comes to mind when the Ontario industry is hurting. Clearly, the Quebec pork processing sector is healthier than ours. And, if the numbers in the previous sow buyout program are any indication, Quebec producers were faring better than their Ontario counterparts then too.

In our April cover story, however, reporter Suzanne Deutsch found that ASRA, the Quebec hog stabilization program, had a $780 million deficit and that farmers in that province had the highest debt load in Canada. Quebec pork industry officials predict many more producers there will take advantage of the recently-announced buyout to exit the industry this time, so the relative impact of the current crisis on Quebec producers remains to be seen.

Since the 1980s, there have been too many pork industry crises and several of them have been declared the "worst ever." We are, however, now clearly in uncharted waters. No one can find a precedent for the current crisis of low prices and high feed costs, coupled with declining consumption. An exodus of producers threatens the viability of packers here. Beginning on page 6, field editor Mary Baxter outlines the options producers are considering.

One of the issues that producers here face is the continued and unfair connection made between H1N1 flu and the swine industry, particularly by our national media. The damage is well documented. In mid-August a Tri-National Agricultural Accord signed by ministers of agriculture in Mexico, Canada and the United States requested that media use the clinical term H1N1 when referring to the disease and a possible pandemic because of a public misconception about the 'swine flu' designation.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, subsidized by taxpayers and sometimes accused of an anti-business stance, refuses to change its policy of using the "swine flu" term. BP 

ROBERT IRWIN