The increase is part of a broader rise in demand for protein, which has created more demand for most high-quality sources of protein.

Why it matters: Hog production increases help contribute to the income of farmers and help grow the agriculture sector.

“The Ontario pork sector has benefited from a period of strength, and it’s been driven by a lot of high prices last year and steady demand for pork,” said Tara Terpstra, chair of the board of Ontario Pork at the organization’s annual meeting. The meeting was held in conjunction with the Ontario Swine Conference in Niagara Falls.

About seven per cent more hogs shipped resulted in a total of 6.2 million hogs shipped in Ontario in 2026. A lot of those pigs are exported, which meant a week of pain when the United States imposed across-the-board tariffs on Canadian exports early in 2025.

It is the continuing geopolitical uncertainty that informed much of what Ontario Pork did in 2025, Terpstra said in an address she shared with Ontario Pork’s executive director Ken Ovington. She identified federal and provincial elections and global uncertainty, especially around trade, as challenges.

“When trade relationships become uncertain, or when tariffs are threatened or imposed, it’s extremely difficult for you to plan, invest and make long-term business decisions,” she said.

Ontario Pork has increased its advocacy at the federal level with trade uncertainty and the CUSMA North American trade agreement under review until July.

The many issues with the potential to affect pork producers have been an oppportunity for Ontario Pork to make its case with federal politicians and government representatives, including African swine fever (ASF) risk.

“Ontario pork producers will not be a silent casualty of geopolitical disputes. Ontario Pork has pushed hard on this file,” said Terpstra.

Evolving strategic focus

Ontario Pork adopted and implemented a new strategic plan in 2025, which resulted in changes in its strategic approach especially around areas creating volatility, including markets and trade.

The five areas of focus identified in the strategic planning process include:

• Advocacy
• Producer engagement
• Producer services
• Promotion
• Research and innovation.

The strategic plan was created after input from producers identified priorities.

“The result is a strategy that is about mitigating risks and delivering value, not adding complexity or creating new programs for their own sake,” said Terpstra.

Research is being refocused, she added, including more work on economic analysis of trade risks.

During the strategic planning process, it was determined that “the approach needed to be clear, research needed to be more focused and more deliberate.”

The goal is to make sure that research is of practical use to farmers, Terpstra said.

Ontario Pork has also made a deliberate differentiation between public outreach and product promotion in its new plan. The organization increased its education of young people, including creating educational events that engage people longer. An example is at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair, where there was an education component and a separate production promotion component, said Ovington.

Product promotion is also evolving to help younger people learn to cook. Ontario Pork partnered with 25 content creators and showed them choosing and cooking pork from Ontario. The videos on social media platforms totalled about half a million views in a month.

Ovington says research has shown that the Gen Z generation was choosing less pork because they didn’t know how to cook it.

A young board of directors

Ontario Pork’s board of directors is younger than most farmer boards, partially because there are young people eager to be involved and Ontario Pork’s leadership development program is encouraging young people to become involved earlier.

Six of the board members have been there for less than two years, but Terpstra said that means they bring fresh ideas.

Processing capacity is still stagnant

Most of the pigs in Ontario are processed through two large plants, the Sofina Foods plant in Burlington and the Conestoga Meats co-operative plant in Breslau, and most of the increased production is exported as live hogs to the United States.

There has been discussion of an expansion of Conestoga Meats for several years.

Terpstra says Ontario Pork makes the point to government regularly that government help to build a new plant would keep more hogs in the province for processing, creating more jobs and economic development in the province.

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Instead of cash, the attackers demanded the hog business owners publicly admit to what they alleged to be livestock mistreatment.

The occurrence was unique and alarming, says Ali Dehghantanha, Canada Research Chair in Cybersecurity & Threat Intelligence at the University of Guelph’s Cyber Science Lab.

The lab offers a for-fee support service for those managing cyberattacks and cybersecurity.

While the number of cybersecurity incidents across Ontario’s agriculture industry has been rapidly increasing overall, he says the cashless ransomware attack against the family hog business – an incident he and his colleagues helped the family resolve – highlights what could become a wider trend in the tactics used by special interest actors.

Why it matters: Ransomware and other criminal cyber activities usually come with demands for payment. Malicious actors focused on disrupting food production rather than money pose another, potentially harder-to-solve threat.

According to Dehghantanha, the attack perpetrators claimed to have a variety of incriminating evidence showing animal abuse on the farm. This included camera footage taken from what the perpetrators claimed was a now-compromised farm surveillance system. The attacker’s prerequisite for releasing their hold on the farm’s network was a public statement, from the business owners, admitting to animal abuse.

In Dehghantanha’s view, this would have been financially devastating for the business.

In reality, no such footage existed. Indeed, claims of comprised cameras were false. Barring the demand for self-incrimination, the attack proved to be a standard, easily manageable ransomware attack.

“This was the first time working in this specific industry we have seen ransomware not asking for money. That would make our job much more difficult as we are dealing with adversaries whose motivation is not money,” Dehghantanha says, adding the transfer of cash is often the riskiest part for those committing ransomware attacks, because the movement of funds can be tracked.

“Prior to this we were not concerned with these small family food businesses…There was not a playbook for these kinds of situations.”

More accessible ransomware

Dehghantanha says his lab has been engaged with 20 cybersecurity issues reported from southern Ontario in the first half of 2023 alone – up from a mere handful in the entirety of 2019. Awareness of cyber risk has likely played a role in higher reporting, but it’s also getting easier for bad actors to acquire harmful attack tools like ransomware.

Simultaneously, the agriculture and food sector are underprepared for such threats. Dehghantanha considers agriculture and food to lag other sectors, notably energy and health, by approximately five years. Remedying the problem would begin by establishing a committee or another body of industry representatives, technology experts, and others to design cybersecurity standards “rooted in the reality of the industry.”

“We must identify steps for farmers and businesses that can be gradually achieved to get to the same level. This has happened in energy and health sector so there’s no reason it can’t happen in agriculture sector,” says Dehghantanha.

“We need to identify a body responsible for receiving these standard reports from farmers trying to evaluate them and give feedback and work with them…If a farmer knows they are level two, level three, or whatever level they are, it would make it much easier for them to understand and improve.”

Awareness and practice

Stakeholders in the agriculture sector, such as Ontario Pork, say they are raising awareness about the ever-growing need for better cybersecurity. In an email statement received July 12, Ken Ovington, general manager for Ontario Pork, says the commodity group “routinely meets with cybersecurity experts and researchers to gather knowledge that can be used to create awareness and provide informational tools that are valuable to pork producers and the provincial pork industry.

“These types of cyberattacks are undeniably on the rise. As technology usage increases, so does the methods and sophistication of cyber criminals so it’s crucial that producers, agricultural organizations and government continue to prioritize cybersecurity measures, stay vigilant, and collaborate to prevent future cyberattacks,” says Ovington.

Strategies used to prevent issues within the organization itself were listed as well, including cybersecurity training for employees. No comment on specific incidents, such as the ransomware attack on the family hog operation, was provided.

Dehghantanha himself encourages greater proactivity. While establishing standards would help the agriculture sector improve overall security – and, potentially, bring spinoff benefits like lower insurance rates for higher cybersecurity scores – he stresses individuals and organizations need to pay attention to the threat posed by cyber criminals focused on industry disruption over money.

“We don’t need to wait for a standard to work on awareness. If you have livestock, you could be on a target list.”

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