The General Manager of Manitoba Pork suggests, while there’s room for pork producers to be optimistic heading into 2026, that optimism is being tempered by tariff threats and global political uncertainty.
Manitoba Pork General Manager Can Dahl observes, on the positive side we did see profitability in 2025 due to strong demand for both pigs and pork, especially for isowean pigs due to disease pressure in the U.S. and reasonable feed costs but on the flip side of the coin we’re seeing significant international market volatility and an uncertain relationship with the U.S. due to factors such as tariff threats, California’s Proposition 12 and Country of Origin Labelling, as well as tariffs on pork going into China and the EU’s blocking of Canadian pork.
I still do see a very strong demand for Canadian pork for a number of reasons. Again, I had mentioned things like disease pressure. We see disease pressure in the United States but we also see African Swine Fever having an impact on markets. As well affordability has become top of mind for consumers around the world. When pork is compared to other proteins it’s affordable so we are going to see a strong ongoing demand for Canadian pork and we are going to see an ongoing demand for Canadian isoweans going into the U.S. So, that profitability that we saw in 2025 is going to be with us for at least the first half of 2026.
We have diseases under control right now here in Manitoba. There’s a lot of reasons to be optimistic for pork production in Manitoba. It’s that market uncertainty and the trade uncertainty and the political uncertainty. Which one of those is going to win out? Is it going to be the instability in global trade and global politics? Is that going to win out over the positive market conditions? I hope not but that question is pretty difficult to answer at this point.
~ Cam Dahl, Manitoba Pork
