Farm Credit Canada has released its 2018 mid-year economic outlooks for Canada's agriculture and agri-food sectors.

Craig Klemmer, a Principle Agricultural Economist with Farm Credit Canada, says that while increasing hog inventories have pressured hog prices, a stronger North American economy continues to stimulate consumer demand for pork.

Craig Klemmer explains:

"The overall Canadian and US economies are improving and that has been leading to higher wages. We are seeing strong demand for Canadian red meat and red meat demand in general, in many parts of the world.

"We are also seeing hog inventories increasing in both Canada and the United States and as a result of this increase, some expected export opportunities have been slower. We're also seeing some slower growth in terms of the slaughter capacity in the United States.

"So, in terms of export opportunities, things haven’t been as strong as we originally forecast at the beginning of the year and that has been a bit of a challenge.

"Conversely, we have seen some increased export opportunities into other countries. Mexico has been growing, they're also growing in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines, and we expect to gain exports to China maybe over the next little bit.

"Those are things that we have yet to be seeing so we're seeing some good news stories there.

"The low Canadian dollar is also making our product relatively competitive, especially from exports from the United States into some of these international markets, and those are factors also that we need to be considering".

Klemmer says the really positive news is that, as we see wages increase in Canada and the United States, we continue to see strong demand for product.

He says people are choosing to consume pork and that strong demand is a good news story for the industry.

As reported by Bruce Cochrane, Farmscape.Ca