Update… There is a story elsewhere in this issue that talks about prices, hog numbers, and the how much the stronger American greenback is helping hog producers in Canada. Tyler Fulton, the director of risk management with h@ms Marketing Services says, despite higher live hog numbers, prices in western Canada have improved over the past couple of weeks, (from Sept 25 back).
Although live hogs numbers are climbing, in line with the seasonal trends typically at this time of year, live hogs prices have improved in western Canada over the past couple of weeks.
Fulton says it’s a bit of a counter-seasonal trend which is surprising given that prices typically erode after the Labor Day holiday and especially when exports aren’t  performing that well.
“The profit situation is about the tightest that we’ve seen in the last two years,” he says. “But arguably Canadian producers are generally in profitable territory and that’s largely due to the fact that the Canadian dollar is so weak against the U.S. dollar.”
Fulton thinks the feed market situation, is allowing Canadian producers to breathe a little bit easier in that there’s a belief out there that there will be a lot of feed quality supplies and producers won’t be left too short. Obviously that’s pretty region specific.
“There are areas of western Saskatchewan that really struggled to make any type of a crop because of early drought,” he said. “Overall as far as the industry goes, I think profitability looks OK given the time of year and some of the challenges we’ve had.”
Fulton says hog prices are at a far lower level than they were at this time last year but, he points out, last year the industry was dealing with a ten per cent reduction in hog supply as a result of losses incurred from PED.  •                      — By Harry Siemens