Farmscape for December 29, 2009   (Episode 3386)

Beginning in the new year a new company will take over the administration of hog marketing services in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

In April Manitoba Pork Marketing and the SPI Marketing Group announced plans to form a joint hog marketing venture to serve pork producers in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Beginning January 4th Hog Administrative Services or h@ms will begin providing a full range of hog marketing service on behalf of the two parent companies.

Manitoba Pork Marketing CEO Perry Mohr says the partnership offers a range of benefits.

Clip-Perry Mohr-Manitoba Pork Marketing:
I'm quite excited about the potential opportunities that exist in Saskatchewan.

Those producers have largely been without a large number of services for a significant period of time so we believe that there's some opportunities to add some value in Saskatchewan from marketing services to insurance programs to risk management services.

Manitoba Pork had a fairly comprehensive service package and just to name a few the risk management, the insurance program and just our marketing services and the things that they encompass.

What our objective is is to get into Saskatchewan, expose these producers to these services.

Having the extra producer base to work with and potential revenue opportunities from that producer base may allow us to enhance some of our existing packages.

Certainly we'll be adapting and personalizing the programs to the producers that need them.

Mohr says, by spreading the costs over a larger number of hogs, the cost per unit will go down.

He says starting in January both provinces will be charging a 50 cent marketing fee and the goal is to reduce that cost at some point in the future.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council