2016 was a challenging year for many pork producers in the province.

Manitoba Pork Chair George Matheson says the low pork prices made things tough, adding it still was not profitable late in the year.

"The hog prices in 2016 could be considered below average and tapering off a fair bit as the year progressed," he explained. "One good thing, the futures that we were given back in late summer/early fall were very depressed and they didn't tend to go as low as they had forecasted."

Matheson says hog production numbers remained steady at about 4.5 million market hogs produced, with most of those going to Maple Leaf in Brandon and HyLife at Neepawa.

He adds about three million weanlings were exported to the United States, with most going to Iowa and Minnesota.