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Pork Lenders Meeting designed to keep financial providers up-to-date with pork industry
EPA Deal With Environmentalists Will Hurt Farmers
Pork Lenders Meeting designed to keep
financial providers up-to-date with pork industry
Pork producers are encouraged to tell their lenders about an upcoming workshop that is designed specifically for members of the banking community. The 2nd annual Pork Lenders Meeting will provide up-to-date financial, market, export and legislative information.
The meeting will be July 15 at the Country Inn & Suites, 1900 Premiere Drive, Mankato, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The cost is $20 per attendee and includes lunch, breaks and handouts.
The preregistration deadline is July 9. To register online, go to www.mnpork.com/producers/Lenders or contact Colleen Carey at the Minnesota Pork Board, (800) 537-7675 or colleen@mnpork.com.
Program sponsors are the Minnesota Pork Board, Minnesota Pork Producers Association, National Pork Producers Council and Pork Checkoff.
Dr. Steve Meyer, president of Paragon Economics, Inc. and a livestock and agricultural economics specialist, will open the workshop with his Market Outlook presentation. Meyer will explore what the current economic situation means for pork producers and his view on national and global factors influencing pork demand, feed costs and trade.
An Update on State and National Public Policy will be given by David Preisler, executive director, Minnesota Pork Producers Association and Pat McGonegle, vice president, National Pork Producers Council. The discussion will look at how free trade agreements, farm bill re-authorization, energy and climate change policies, and legislative attempts to further regulate animal production practices may influence pork producers’ production costs, management and product demand.
Focusing on the Right Farm Financial Information is the presentation topic by Protein Sources management team members Paul FitzSimmons and Dan Sohre. Based in Mapleton, Minn., Protein Sources provides production and financial management services for farrowing and grow-finish swine operations in the upper Midwest. These services include farm, swine facility and production management, and financial and risk management. Using their years of experience, FitzSimmons and Sohre will explain which production and financial numbers can best assist lenders in decision making and in helping their pork producing customers.
The meeting concludes with a presentation by Brendan Dorais, a manager with Chicago-based Commodity and Ingredient Hedging. The title of his talk, Managing Your Margin to Protect Profitability, looks at tools to achieve hog operation profitability from a margin perspective, methods to identify one’s margin, and contracting choices and strategies.
EPA Deal With Environmentalists Will Hurt Farmers
CAFO Rule Guidance CAFO Settlement Agreement
Washington, D.C., May 27 - The National Pork Producers Council today expressed deep frustration and anger over the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s continuing efforts to develop costly agricultural regulations that provide few if any additional environmental benefits.
EPA Tuesday reached a settlement with several environmental groups on a lawsuit that challenges Clean Water Act permitting regulations for concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). NPPC is part of that ongoing litigation. The CAFO Rule, which was issued Oct. 31, 2008, sets a zero-discharge standard for manure from CAFOs getting into waterways and imposes penalties – $37,500 a day – on operations that do have discharges.
Prior to the 2008 rule, CAFOs were less likely to be held liable for discharges, and land application of manure for crop production was unregulated under the Clean Water Act. While the CAFO Rule brought large livestock operations fully under the Clean Water Act, it allows them to operate without a federal permit – and not be penalized – as long as they do not have discharges. (This approach was strongly affirmed in 2005 by a federal appeals court.)
“With this one-sided settlement, EPA yanked the rug out from under America’s livestock farmers,” said Michael Formica, NPPC’s chief environmental counsel. “NPPC is looking at all appropriate legal responses to EPA’s disappointing course of action.”
In the settlement deal, EPA agreed to:
“This agreement sets the stage for new Clean Water Act permitting measures that will add to producers’ costs, drive more farmers out of business, increase concentration in livestock production to comply and hurt rural economies,” said Randy Spronk, a Minnesota pork producer who heads NPPC’s environmental committee. “And the measures will do nothing really to improve water quality.
“Additionally, the settlement was negotiated in private and without consultation or input from the regulated farming community,” Spronk said.
“This flies in the face of the Obama administration’s pledges to operate government more transparently. And, in this economy, the administration should be enacting measures that create jobs, not implementing regulations that put American farmers out of business.”
China Begins Accepting U.S. Pork Shipments
Washington D.C., May 14 - China today gave official notice that it is accepting shipments of U.S. pork, a move hailed by the National Pork Producers Council. Pork produced on or after May 1 now can be exported to China.
The Asian nation closed its market to U.S. pork in late April 2009 in the wake of an outbreak in humans of novel H1N1 influenza, which the media misnamed “swine” flu.
In March, the United States and China reached an agreement to reopen the Chinese market to U.S. pork imports, but it took China until now to begin accepting product.
“This is tremendous news for U.S. pork producers,” said NPPC President Sam Carney, a pork producer from Adair, Iowa. “China is one of our biggest markets, so being able to ship pork there is extremely important to the U.S. pork industry.
“Now that it can be sent to the Chinese market, we will focus on the remaining impediments to exporting U.S. pork to China,” Carney said.
NPPC is continuing to urge the Obama administration to press China to address a number of other trade-related issues that limit U.S. pork imports. Among those issues are China’s ban on U.S. pork produced with ractopamine – an FDA-approved feed ingredient that improves efficiency in pork production – subsidies China provides its domestic pork producers and a value-added tax it imposes on imports.
The U.S. pork industry exported nearly 400,000 metric tons of pork worth nearly $690 million to China/Hong Kong in 2008, making it the No. 3 destination for U.S. pork. Last year, U.S. pork exports to China/Hong Kong were down by 38 percent, falling to just under $427 million.
In October, at the conclusion of the annual U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade meeting, China announced that it would rescind its pork import ban. Since then, NPPC worked closely with the Obama administration to pressure the Chinese to actually lift their ban and begin accepting U.S. pork imports.
Without FTAs, U.S. Pork Producers Could Suffer
Washington, D.C., May 3 - The failure of the United States to approve free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea would result in the U.S. pork industry being out of those markets within 10 years at a cost to producers of more than $11.50 per pig and to the U.S. economy of thousands of jobs, according to analyses released today by the National Pork Producers Council.
Conducted by Iowa State University economist Dermot Hayes, the analyses take into account the trade agreements the three countries have concluded with other nations. Colombia and Panama recently finalized FTAs with Canada, and South Korea is nearing completion on a deal with the European Union.
NPPC joined with the American Farm Bureau Federation, National Association of Wheat Growers, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and National Corn Growers Association in decrying congressional inaction on the pending trade deals at a press conference today.
“It is clear,” said Don Butler, NPPC immediate past president, “that without new trade agreements, the United States will be going backward by standing still. Our industry can’t afford that; our country can’t afford that.
“For us to remain a successful and viable industry,” added Butler, “we need new and expanded market access. And the way to get that is through free trade agreements.”
Exports are vital to the U.S. pork industry, which last year shipped more than $4.3 billion of pork products, an amount that added about $38 to the price producers received for each hog marketed.
Pork – and other – exports also create jobs, adding to the overall U.S. economy. For every 1 percent increase in the size of the U.S. pork industry, an expansion that would come through a rise in exports, 920 full-time pork industry jobs are created and nearly 4,600 jobs are generated throughout the economy, according to Hayes.
The U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement would add $10 to the price U.S. pork producers receive for each hog marketed and would create more than 3,600 pork industry and 18,000 total jobs. The FTAs with Colombia and Panama would, espectively, add $1.15 and 20 cents to the price of each hog sold and generate 3,500 and 600 pork industry jobs, according to a separate analysis of the FTAs conducted by Hayes.
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