Pork producers have had a difficult couple of years.Starting with the drought in the summer of 2021 and extending through to today our feed prices have been really high and, while we've had some good hog prices throughout this time period, that kind of ended this spring as our futures prices declined so right now producers are losing money and inflation is affecting basically all the other costs on the farm.
A big part of that inflation is our energy costs for electricity and for natural gas so having the carbon tax exemption on natural gas would provide a significant benefit to farms.
Right now, we've estimated that this carbon tax costs producers anywhere between one and three dollars per hog and it's only going to go up.It's becoming a very significant cost for the farms and the exemption will help substantially with our cost of production.
I will add that producers in other countries, especially our main competitors such as the U.S. don't have a carbon tax so it's making it very difficult for Canadian hog farms to compete.
Ferguson says farmers pay their energy bills each month so the quicker Bill C-234 can move forward the better.
Source : Farmscape.ca