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Canada Agribusiness Report Q2 2009
Business Monitor International, April 2009, Pages: 51
This Canada Agribusiness service provides proprietary medium term price forecasts for key commodities, including corn, wheat, rice, sugar, cocoa, coffee, soy and milk; in addition to newly-researched competitive intelligence on leading agribusiness producers, traders and suppliers; in-depth analysis of latest industry developments; and essential industry context on Canada's agribusiness service.
In this Canada Agribusiness Report for Q2 2009, the publisher introduces the new Business Environment section. This section gives an overview of the agriculture and fisheries industry in Canada, and its significance to the overall economy and labour market. Tjhey discuss the industry's key sectors, including aquaculture, and also cover government support available to agriculture in the country.
Canada's agricultural sector's woes will continue in 2009, as prices for its key agricultural exports of grain and livestock fall. While farmers are expecting a bumper grain harvest this year - the publisher expects wheat production to be up 48% on the 2008 level - this will be offset by the lower prices. Despite a small bounce at the beginning of the year, the publisher does not expect wheat prices to recover in 2009. This will be a cruel blow for farmers who missed out on some of the high prices of early 2008 owing to a disappointing harvest and allocated extra planting area for wheat for 2009's crop.
It is the livestock sector that has been suffering the most in recent years, however. In January 2009, the beef cow inventory was down 6.6% from the year before and the number of calves born down 4.3%. The hog situation was even worse, with the number of pigs on farms down 10.2% in January 2009, compared to January 2008. This followed on from a 7.4% fall the previous year. Pig farmers have been hit by a combination of falling prices for pork, while the price of input costs such as fuel and feed was rising rapidly. The pressure on profits was too much for many smaller farmers and between January 2007 and January 2009, almost a quarter left the industry.
There are hopes that now inventories have been lowered pork prices in North America may begin to rise again, and that this combined with the falling cost of inputs could drag the pork sector back into profitability. However, with world demand for meat likely to be sluggish in 2009, the publisher is not banking on any major turnaround just yet. The government has launched a number of measures to help the sector through the tough times, including changing the rules of its Advance Payments Program to allow livestock farmers suffering from 'severe economic hardship' to borrow up to CAD400,000, with their livestock inventories as security. The Saskatchewan provincial government has also stepped in to help livestock farmers in the province with a CAD71mn support package.
While the publisher does not see any major turnaround in the livestock sector in the next few years, in other sectors they expect to see strong growth once the world economy recovers. Canada will be able to benefit from strong demand growth for grain in emerging markets and the government's commitment to use renewable fuel in gasoline should drive demand for grain-based ethanol at home.
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