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The National Pork Producers Council
today commended the Bush administration for its decision to lend
assistance to U.S. pork producers to help them weather the current
economic crisis in the hog business.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture
will purchase up to $50 million of pork products, which will
be donated to child nutrition and other domestic food assistance
programs.
NPPC officers and top staff recently
met with Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer to urge him to take
immediate action to address a crisis that over the past seven
months has cost the pork industry more than $2.1 billion. Due
mostly to a doubling of feed costs, producers have lost $30-$50
on each hog marketed over the last 30 days.
Economists have estimated that
the industry will need to reduce production by at least 10 percent
- meaning a reduction of 600,000 sows - to restore profitability.
Such a cutback, however, could result in less-efficient packing
plants closing, less manure for crop fertilizer and, correspondingly,
a need for more man-made, foreign-produced fertilizer, a hike
in pork retail prices because of a smaller supply and lost jobs.
"The action by USDA to buy
additional pork will benefit America's pork producers, the U.S.
economy and the people who rely on the government's various food
programs," said NPPC President Bryan Black, a pork producer
from Canal Winchester, Ohio. "It will help our industry
reduce the herd and thereby bring supply and demand back into
balance and allow producers to continue to provide consumers
with economical, nutritious pork."
In its meeting with Schafer,
NPPC requested that USDA purchase an additional 50.5 million
pounds of pork - in 2007 it bought 43 million pounds - for various
federal food programs. This would reduce the U.S. sow herd by
nearly 163,600 animals. The organization also asked that the
secretary implement emergency programs and loan guarantees to
help producers purchase feed, consider allowing early release
without penalty of non-environmentally sensitive Conservation
Reserve Program acres back into crop production and support pork
exports through USDA's Market Access and Foreign Market Development
programs.
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