Farm-Scape is sponsored by Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork Play Audio Farm-Scape is a Wonderworks Canada production and is distributed courtesy of Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork.

Farm-Scape, Episode 1450

Research in Saskatchewan shows hog producers can boost revenues by better targeting ideal market weights. The Prairie Swine Centre has analyzed four different grading grids at three different market prices.

Centre President Dr. John Patience says, given a market where most producers have had more months of loss than of profit over the past 24 months, the focus has been reducing costs and cutting losses.

He says one thing producers can do on the revenue side to extract more money from the market is to ship a higher proportion of animals within the core weight range.

"Even when the market price is only a dollar a kilogram, which obviously is well below break even, the difference between having a good sort (getting about 88 per cent of the pigs within core) verses a poor sort (getting only about 60 percent of the pigs within the core) can increase revenues to the producer from between $4.75 per pig to over $7.00 per pig.

When the market price is $1.35 per kilogram, which is about where we are right now, that differential ranges from just over $6.00 a pig to $9.50 a pig.

If we dream a little bit in Technicolor and go to $1.70 per kilogram market price, which we hope to see if not this year certainly next year, then the benefit is between $7.00 and almost $12.00 per pig sold.

What we're saying is that 'producers can increase their average value per pig sold by those differentials by getting 90 percent or almost 90 percent of their pigs within the core weight group verses only getting about 60 percent of their pigs in the core weight group".

Dr. Patience says this means extra labor but those are a lot of dollars sitting on the table and just weighing pigs is all that has to be done to capture them.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.