Has Canada’s hog industry turned the corner?

With summer bar-b-ques lighting up across the country and BLT season around the corner, the time has come for those in Canada’s hog/pork supply chain to breathe a little easier and take note of some good news. After several years of sector-changing challenges that have led to major restructuring of pork processing operations and hit a number of producers especially hard, some price stability and bullish factors supporting pork production have finally emerged.

Inventories are falling
To say that 2023 was painful for hog producers is an understatement. The glut of hogs stemming from fading sales to China and weak domestic demand, made worse by shuttered processing plants and reduced slaughter capacity, led to sinking prices and squeezed margins. But things are now starting to turn around for the industry.

Canada is still dispensing with a glut of hogs, in part by dramatically increasing the number of live animals sent to the U.S. for processing. Between January and April, over 561,000 market hogs have gone to the U.S., an increase of 144,000 from the year before. That’s helped bring some balance to Canada’s overall supply after years of tumbling prices in chaotic markets (Figure 1).

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