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The Canadian pork industry and COVID‐19: A year of resilience
Author(s) -
McEwan Ken,
Marchand Lynn,
Shang Max Zongyuan
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
canadian journal of agricultural economics/revue canadienne d'agroeconomie
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.505
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 1744-7976
pISSN - 0008-3976
DOI - 10.1111/cjag.12276
Subject(s) - consumption (sociology) , business , per capita , economic shortage , resilience (materials science) , agriculture , psychological resilience , covid-19 , china , agricultural economics , supply chain , economics , marketing , geography , government (linguistics) , environmental health , social science , population , philosophy , linguistics , archaeology , pathology , sociology , psychology , thermodynamics , medicine , physics , disease , infectious disease (medical specialty) , psychotherapist
While COVID‐19 had the potential to be extremely disruptive to the Canadian pork supply chain, the sector showed resiliency by adjusting to market changes to ensure industry continuation. Unlike other non‐agricultural firms that were mandated to close at times, the pork sector was deemed an essential service and allowed to continue operating throughout the pandemic. Evidence of this resiliency is seen in three main ways. First, market access to the United States was maintained for both live pigs and pork exports. Second, Canada not only maintained market share in global pork exports, but it also actually increased shipments because of strong demand from China caused by African swine fever. Third, the challenges of processing plant closures and labour shortages were overcome in a variety of ways including increasing interprovincial shipments and increasing live pig exports to the United States. Pork consumption on a per capita basis continued the historical downward trend, and it is expected that consumers will return to their normal consumption patterns (e.g., dining at restaurants) despite job losses. At the meat processing level, it is anticipated that there will be an acceleration in the process to automate.