With margins tight in hog industry nutrition plays an even bigger role

There was a time when raising hogs was almost like walking, just get up and do it. Today, with all the regulations, higher feed costs, and an almost par dollar, raising pork is not for the faint-hearted.
SASK Pork reports, although the cost of producing pork in Canada is among the lowest in the world, Canadian producers lost money in 2010. Many farmers will say 2011 wasn't much better, despite rising pork and pig prices because the black hole dug in 2009 and 2010 for many is just too deep.
InterPig is an international network of swine economists who collect and exchange standardized information on swine production costs & productivity in various countries for comparison.
Mark Ferguson, the manager of Industry and Policy Analysis with the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board and a member of InterPig tells Farmscape.ca swine production costs in Canada last year compared quite favorably with those in competing nations.
"In 2010, the total costs of production in Canada was about $1.54 per kilogram," says Ferguson. "What we know is in 2010 both Brazil and the U.S. reported a lower cost of production with the U.S. averaging about $1.43 per kilogram and southern Brazil had a cost of about $1.38. So, while we weren't the lowest cost producers in the world, we were very close and I think considering what the dollar did in 2010 that we're in a very good position."
He says when comparing with European countries, the EU average in 2010 was about $2.12 per CKG so Canadian farmers are definitely producing at a lower cost than the EU producers. The lowest cost reported in the EU was France at $1.86 per kilogram.
Ferguson says at $1.43 per kilogram, Canadian producers received the lowest price of all of the countries in the dataset, the U.S. about ten cents higher at $1.55 and Brazil was quite a bit higher at $1.93.
"Producers in the EU, which receive a really high price, lost from $7 to $70.00 per hundred kilograms compared to losses of $10 per hundred kilograms in Canada so, although Canada has among the lowest production costs in the world when combined with the low price Canadian producers continued to operate at a loss in 2010," he said.
With those kinds of cost of production numbers and an abundance of product available pig producers must be aware of the nutritional profile of the dried distiller's grains with solubles they use in swine rations and to account for variations in quality.
Dried distillers grains with solubles, a co-product of ethanol production, offer swine producers an opportunity to reduce feed costs but the nutritional profile of these co-products can vary considerably.
Neil Campbell, a partner with Gowan's Feed Consulting told Farmscape a growing number of ethanol plants are installing centrifuge equipment to remove additional fat from the soluble stream.
"We like to recommend using an approved plant system of procurement where you understand what plants are producing products with the higher fat content or predictable energy value and then sourcing from those plants," says Campbell. "You can do that with any of the re-sellers or the marketers of the product and just ensure you're getting product from a plant that you know the nutrient content of. Then we further recommend that you test the product when you receive it."
He tells producers get a laboratory to analyze the product, make sure the nutrient content of the product is matching what he expects when formulating rations.
"This whole process of removing the fat from the solubles I think will continue to grow with more and more plants extracting more oil from the distiller's grains," says Campbell. "It's predicted by mid-way through 2012 that 50 percent of the ethanol plants in the United States will be extracting a significant amount of oil from the distillers and I think pig producers and feed manufacturers need to be aware of that and need to account for that in the procurement of the distillers and then how they're building the formulations for the product."
He says if producers don't adjust the ration to account for the lower energy content, it will impact performance, but, by balancing the ration accordingly, it won't. •
— By Harry Siemens