The Ontario Pork
marketing board has posted data for 2014 on its website.
It shows that 1,524 pork producers in
Ontario marketed 4.97 million hogs in 2014, approximately 1.36 per cent more
than 2013.
Ontario’s pork industry from “farm to fork” generated $867
million in Gross Domestic Product, $2.5 billion in economic output and provided
15,814 full-time job equivalents.
Statistics Canada numbers for July 1, 2014, counted 12.9 million pigs in Canada and 2.9 million pigs in Ontario including 302,800 sows and bred gilts.
Producer numbers are down by more than 93 per cent from the peak
of more than 20,000 in 1979 and less than half as many as 10 years ago.
The total value of sales for market hogs in 2014 was $1.014
billion, up 14 per cent from 2013.
The average 100 per cent formula price for 2014 was $209 per
hundred kilograms, up 25 per cent from 2013.
The average cost to produce a hog was $177 per hundred
kilograms, an increase of 1.1 per cent from 2013.
Ontario’s share of the North American hog market was 4.3 per
cent in 2014.
Ontario exported 813,774 pigs weighing less than 50 kg to
the US.
Ontario meat processors handled 84 per cent of all hog
sales; the balance of animals are shipped to the United States, Quebec or other
provinces.
From January to November, Canada imported 171,755 tonnes of
pork, down 14.8 per cent from 2013.
From January to November, Canada exported 1,052,376 tonnes
of pork, down 2.9 per cent from 2013.
The U.S. and Japan are Ontario’s major pork export markets
with 34 per cent going to the US, and 17 per cent to Japan. China, Russia, and
Mexico were also among the top five export destinations last year.