Alberta Pork is pleased to announce the arrival of Bijon Brown as our new Production Economist.
Bijon has joined the team to focus on taking a closer look at cost of production, by collecting information from producers, aggregating the data and comparing it to pricing reports to better understand pork cost margins in Alberta. In doing so, he will help bring value to producers and their operations.
“Bijon has a wealth of experience on the side of financial modeling with the Government of Alberta,” says Darcy Fitzgerald, Executive Director, Alberta Pork. “We are confident he will make a positive contribution to our efforts and round out our work on the side of economics.”
Along with studying costing, Bijon will be tasked with generating regional perspectives for data, to contextualize the impact of the Alberta pork industry on our province and country beyond a dollar figure. He will be looking at how our industry supports rural Alberta community life, as a way to more effectively demonstrate our value proposition for all stakeholders.
Bijon is excited to be part of the team and looks forward to identifying gaps, to save producers money and act as a champion for their efforts.
“This is a great opportunity for me to make a positive difference for producers and their businesses,” says Bijon. “We know that western Canada’s cost of production is high, but how high, and in which areas?”
Bijon holds a Ph.D in Agriculture and Resource Economics from the University of Alberta, along with a Master’s in Agricultural Economics from the University of Saskatchewan and an undergrad degree from his home country, Jamaica.
While earning his Ph.D, he performed a cost benefit analysis on the effects of adopting near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) technology in Alberta hog barns. NIRS is used in agriculture for accurately estimating feed nutrient content. Bijon’s work, which was presented at the 2017 Banff Pork Seminar, was aimed at estimating the cost savings to Alberta hog producers generated by the adoption of NIRS technology and to determine if it is economically feasible for farmers to invest in the technology. He found that a 500-sow operation could save up to $56,000 per year in feed costs by investing in the technology.
Source : Alberta Pork