I've been putting a lot of hours in at work. In the office, on the road, and now even at home. I just can't seem to switch gears. So here it is a work related video on my personal blog. It's 4.5 minutes and it helps explain the problems with the livestock industry in Ontario. Both the cattle and hog industries are shrinking dramatically, breeding cow inventories have shrunk by nearly 20% since 2003 and the breeding herd for pigs is shrinking even faster. Down by more than 20% in less than 3 years. There are plenty of reasons, US trade barriers like Country of Origin Labelling, H1N1, an increasing Canadian dollar, and rising feed costs lead the list.
It's to the point now where there have been massive layoffs in the processing sector and suppliers as well as farmers are going out of business. If the industry falls below a critical mass there could be even less processing capacity causing a descent into a death spiral that does huge damage to the whole economy along the way. Ontario Farmers have put forward an affordable solution for governments. Hopefully you'll take a minute or 4 to watch the video and maybe even learn more about the program at http://www.beefporkrmp.ca/.
2 comments:
Interesting. I'll have to look into it some more. Now I'm interested to see what the details of the proposal are as the triggers for the insurance are clearly different for the livestock industry than for crops. Thanks for posting this.
Sure thing. The video is talking about price risk. That's been driven by factors beyond our control.
Post a Comment