2021 Broiler outlook update: Waning COVID impacts support the sector

May 26, 2021

Feed prices continue to dominate as a major story in our May update. But, the bigger story may be the waning influence of COVID-related production and consumption declines that was the number one impact in 2020. The resumption of demand more in line with pre-pandemic levels will be what’s needed to boost stability in the sector’s profitability. It may not reach those levels during this outlook period, but consumption is likely to soon start, moving in the right direction. A possible damper on industry revenues is the increased imports of chicken into Canada made possible under CUSMA and CPTPP. However, for the time being, imports are both expensive and hard to source, and chicken is likely to remain competitively priced relative to beef and pork in the domestic market.

Sector continues to fight mounting feed cost pressures

In January, we noted rising feed costs as a trend to monitor throughout 2021. That hasn’t gone away, and if anything, Ontario corn prices have increased and are expected to rise even higher over the next three months (Table 1). While there may be a break in soymeal prices, the overall Eastern broiler feed price is forecast considerably higher in 2021 than the five-year average. That’s true in the west too, where the two main sources of feed are both expected to be well over the five-year average.

Rising feed prices are an issue, but broilers are a sector perhaps better situated than beef or hogs to accommodate them, given the broiler price is adjusted according to a feed price index. Therefore, with profitability tied to overall production levels (themselves a function of demand), we expect to see profits moving in the right direction during the outlook period as demand increases, prompting gains in production.

That said, the next forecasts of the respective sizes of the South and North American crops and China’s seemingly insatiable appetite for feed imports will each bear weight in shifting these feed costs further, either in a supportive or pressuring role.

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Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”