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Farm-Scape, Episode 1465

Saskatchewan Agriculture Food and Rural Revitalization says stronger Canadian hog prices, expected this spring and summer, could be offset by pending US trade action.

Over the past two months global demand for pork has increased substantially pushing up live hog prices by about 40 cents a kilogram bringing them close to and above the cost of production.

Livestock Economist Brad Marceniuk says this strengthening has been a direct result of shifting global meat consumption patterns.

"The demand for pork in the world has increased since January, primarily for two reasons. The first reason is Asian bird flu where millions of chickens have been killed and there's been some uncertainty in the chicken market.

The second reason is basically beef exports from North America were banned from the world. When you get these two factors into effect, there's demand for another source of protein and pork was the source that was in demand.

Since this, though, we've seen some markets start to open up for the beef industry and this will put more beef on the market and will put some potential downward pressure on pork prices.

Looking at the potential countervailing duties on Canadian hogs, we shouldn't see any pork prices affected until the duties are actually implemented, which could happen later this summer. We could see some reduced pork prices.

We expect pork prices to continue to get stronger as we head into spring and summer. If these duties are imposed on Canadian live hogs entering the United States, we could see some price reduction depending on the amount of tariffs imposed on the hogs".

Marceniuk says, if the US ends up imposing duties on the import of live hogs from Canada, the price of Canadian hogs can be expected to drop by an amount equal to that duty.

He says that drop will apply not only to hogs going into the US for processing but also to those hogs that remain in Canada.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.