Manitoba, Saskatchewan hog marketers eye Ontario opportunities

Sunday, March 1, 2009

© AgMedia Inc.

by GEOFF DALE

Manitoba Pork Marketing Coop is eyeing opportunities for expansion eastward, if and when, Ontario switches to open marketing.

General manager Perry Mohr says the cooperative can offer “universally acceptable” services, including “risk management” to producers and processors in provinces outside of its western base.

Mohr notes the coop has a “fairly sophisticated settlement system” that ensures producers get paid for delivering hogs. If Ontario moves to open marketing and producers establish direct buying relationships with processors, “I think there is an opportunity, instead of them re-inventing the wheel – maybe they want to outsource it.”

The co-operative was established as an arms-length venture in the mid-1990s, replacing the Manitoba Hog Producers Marketing Board’s single desk.

Mohr notes the coop provides settlement services to SPI Marketing Group Inc., serving producers in Saskatchewan.

In February, the two marketing companies announced a consolidation by forming a new company called h@ms (hog administrative marketing services). The company will provide marketing, procurement, settlement, in-transit insurance and risk management to its parent companies and beyond the two province’s boundaries. The company, headquartered in Winnipeg, becomes fully operation in January 2010.

According to the Ontario’s Farm Products Marketing Commission directive issued last fall, agents from Manitoba and even Michigan might sell pigs for Ontario producers, says Ontario Pork director of communications Keith Robbins.

He adds Ontario Pork understands that directive is stayed until the Farm Products Appeal Tribunal deals with appeals made by individuals and producer associations across the province.

In January, chairman Curtiss Littlejohn noted that Ontario Pork could assign more than one agent to market pork for producers on its behalf, although only one would initially be assigned in order to ease transition to open marketing.

Incoming Ontario Pork director Doug Ahrens will keep an eye on the evolving situation when he assumes his new duties in early April.

Ahrens, past chair of the Perth County Pork Producers, says: “I find it strange that the West, a number of years ago, went to open marketing but now producers there are coming back to a single desk,” he says. “And in Ontario we’ve got the (Ontario Farm Products Marketing) Commission going to open marketing when we’ve got somewhat of a single desk now.”

He questions the Western organizations’ assumptions that they can do a better job dealing with pork operations in Ontario or Quebec citing distance and geography.

Ontario Pork is already looking at building a marketing arm for producers to use. “So why would we use another province’s arm?” he asks. “Unless they think a better job can be done.”

Producers would have to get higher than current prices. “I can’t see that happening,” Ahrens says.

Mohr says talks have been limited. It is still “very early in the game.”

“We’re not looking at Ontario any differently than we would look at another province,” he says. “Because of what is going on in Ontario, we are probably going to initiate contact with several groups of individuals to see if there is any potential there, to let them know that we would love to work with them, and possibly pay them a visit to go over a game plan, tell what our plan is and what we can do for their needs.” BF