U.S. pork farmers doing OK

 

CoBank said the United States pork sector remains remarkably steady, despite labor and economic headwinds.

The same is true for Canadian hog farmers whose margins have been in the black so far this summer.

As of June 1, total hogs available for market were down only 0.1 per cent year-over-year, and the breeding herd held steady at 5.98 million head, said the CoBank report.

Dressed hog weights averaged 216 pounds per head, helping secure pork supply into summer.

Lean hog futures surpassed $112  per hundredweight in June, the highest since July 2022. Pork carcass cutout values averaged $103 per hundredweight this spring, boosted by belly and ham prices. 

Belly prices have gone up by 18.7 per cent so far thgis year and ham prices increased by 6.4 per cent.

Despite softer feed costs, herd expansion has been limited by tight processing capacity, labor shortages, and high capital costs. Automation and technology are seen as essential to help fill labor gaps across the protein sector, CoBank said.

 

U.S. faces labour shortage

 

CoBank said the United States economy is heading into a labour shortage which will become acute as early as this fall.

There are several reasons, including lower immigration numbers, lower births, retirements and 2.5 million able-bodied people are not working.

Workers have also been hit with a 60 per cent increase in home ownership prices in the last four years, it said.

“With the labor supply about to get tighter, businesses and industries operating in rural America should be increasing their focus on technology to overcome labor availability challenges.

“Barring an unforeseen change in labor force participation rates or immigration policies, the pool of available workers is set to shrink precipitously in the next few years,” said Rob Fox, director of CoBank’s Knowledge Exchange. 

“The problem will be even more acute in states with lower population growth in the Upper Midwest, Corn Belt and the Central Plains. 

Increased adoption of technology, namely AI and robotics, will likely be at the core of any strategy to address the oncoming labor squeeze,” Fox said.

                           

 

 

Forage council elects leaders

The Ontario Forage Council has elected Joe Dickenson president and Travis Grubb and Michael Richards vice-presidents.

The other board members are past president Birgit Martin and Kerrie Jenken, Scott Fisher, Jake Gregory, Lawrence Levesque, Brian Burnett, Denise Byers, Donna Hancock and Christine O'Reilly.
“Together, with renewed energy and continued purpose, we step into this next chapter with optimism and shared resolve,” said general manager Patricia Ellingwood.

Trump targets Canadian dairy tariffs

United States President Donald Trump has put a large target on Canada’s dairy tariffs as he announced plans to hit Canada with a 35 per cent tariff on everything on Aug. 1.

His threat comes amidst intense negotiations to reach a tariff peace deal between Canada and the U.S.

All of Canada’s political parties have promised to protect dairy farmers with tariffs so they can charge prices for their milk that reflect their production costs and provide a return on labour, management and investment.

But the fact remains that U.S. dairy farmers produce milk at prices almost a third less than Canadian prices.

Many dairy farmers on both sides of the border have quit the industry over the years, but the decline has been greater in the United States where larger dairy farms have emerged.

The U.S. has always tried to get through or around Canadian protections for its supply-managed dairy and poultry farmers, but Trump now has ratcheted up his pressure to put the dairy industry at the top of his demands.

In previous trade negotiations, Canada has conceded slices of the Canadian market by allowing limited volumes of dairy products to come in at relatively low tariffs. The U.S. and New Zealand have challenged the way Canada allocates those import volumes to importers.

Most have gone to Canadian dairy companies; New Zealand and the U.S. want the import rights to go to retailers and distributors without ties to the Canadian dairy industry.

                           

Nominations now open for excellence awards

 

 The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Agribusiness and Food is opening nominations for the 2025 Excellence in Agriculture Awards, which recognize individuals and organizations.

 

“The Excellence in Agriculture Awards provide an opportunity to honour and celebrate our agri-food leaders,” said Agriculture Minister Trevor Jones.

 

The 12 categories are:

• Youth Excellence

• Food Processing Excellence

• Research and Innovation Excellence

• Northern Business Excellence

• Workforce Excellence

• Women’s Excellence

• Education Excellence

• Supply Chain Excellence

• Indigenous, Métis or Inuit-Owned Business or Community Excellence

• Promotional Excellence

• Farm Family Excellence

• Urban Agriculture Excellence

Nominations are being accepted until September 2, 2025. 

They can be submitted, including self-nominations, at 

ca/agrifoodinnovation. Both individuals and businesses can be nominated.

    

Bumper corn crop possible

 

The United States is talking about a bumper corn crop this year, although it’s too early to make confident predictions.

 With talk of a new national corn yield record, cash corn prices have dropped as low as $3 a bushel.

Rains moved across the Midwest over the weekend and early this week, aiding crop conditions. Those rains, combined with the fact the U.S. didn’t announce a trade deal with China yet, pressured prices even more. And as analysts explain, you can’t deny the U.S. corn crop could be a monster, even with the possibility of an increased number of prevent plant acres in the South. 

U.S. corn prices have a major influence on all Canadian feed-grain crops and the cost of animal and poultry feeds.

An agriculture gab-fest announced

The Agriculturral Adaptation Council is hosting a gathering of people and organizations interested in envisioning the future of Ontario agriculture.

It will be Sept. 17 at the Brock Hotel in Niagara Falls.

It will be an ideal setting for industry leaders to network, much as used to happen at the annual federal agriculture department’s outlook conferences in Ottawa. 

The conference fits with the AAC’s broader Agri Food 2050 Initiative which is a multi-year effort to identify and act on long-term priorities for Ontario’s agri food sector. 

The conference will explore the big-picture trends shaping the industry’s future: land use pressures, climate change, evolving technologies, labour and demographic shifts and more.

“Ontario’s agriculture and agri-food stakeholders have unique insights and talents to help society collectively respond to disruption and create a future for our next generation,” said AAC board member Ruth Knight who is chair of the Agri-Food 2050 committee. 

“The Agri-Food 2050 initiative is an invitation to all members of our industry to come together proactively and help create a vision of what we’d like that future of our sector to be.”

The event will feature:

• Sector-wide dialogue on the most pressing long-term challenges and opportunities;

• Interactive sessions to help shape future programming and policy;

• Cross-sector networking to spark collaboration and innovation, and

• Launch of vision-to-action working groups that will continue the conversation well beyond the event.

To lay the groundwork, the AAC established a Foresight Working Group to envision three possibilities for how the agriculture and food sector might look in 2050: an optimistic future outlook, a future that maintains the status quo, and a pessimistic future scenario. 

The Working Group also identified five key change drivers that will influence how the future unfolds: economics, environment and resources, social factors, innovation and technology, and policy and capacity for change.

This is AAC’s 30th anniversary. 

It has more than 60 member organizations.