Behind the Lines - February 2008

Monday, February 4, 2008

Once the mainstay of farmer feeders across grain-growing areas, pork production south of the border has accumulated in a few hands over not much more than a decade. While the integrators themselves have touted the benefits of multi-site production and sow-to-packinghouse ownership, an American specialist in global development and environment has put some numbers to made-in-Washington policies that promoted soybean and corn production.

Timothy Wise, director of Global Development and Environmental Institute in Massachusetts, turned a fresh eye to agricultural issues and thinks he has filled a hole in the body of economic studies about food production and government policies.

He argues that the American Farm Bill drove down livestock feed costs, adding billions of dollars to the bottom lines of pork integrating companies, often to the detriment of farmer feeders in the traditional Mid-western growing regions. With ethanol production driving feed prices, the shoe is now on the other foot, Wise argues. And new environmental rules applied to the big operations, which don't grow feed and spread manure on relatively small acreages, will tend to increase their costs even further.

Does this sea change matter to Ontario pork producers caught up in the feed pricing crunch? Better Pork senior staff editor Don Stoneman put the question to a number of producers and got a surprising variety of answers, which he reports in this month's cover story starting on page 8.

All producers are interested in keeping costs down while maximizing production. Feeding blood plasma to pigs is one of those trends that is drawing a lot of interest these days.

For this issue, former Ontario agriculture ministry nutritionist Janice Murphy and pharmaceutical company swine specialist Dr. Ernie Sanford filed separate stories related to feeding blood plasma. They are looking at this feed from very different points of view. Sanford's herd health story starts on page 22. Murphy's nutrition column begins on page 26.

Ontario Pork's environment specialist Sam Bradshaw has deviated from his normal topic to write about employee issues on pig farms. In June of 2006, the Occupational Health and Safety Act began applying to farms that have one or more paid workers, even for a short period of time.

Employment issues are very important to the province's producers. In the 12 months ending Dec. 1, 2007, 2,917 producers shipped around 5.4 million hogs. That was about 90 producers fewer than in the previous year, and they shipped more pigs. Towards the end of the year, weekly slaughter was 115,000-120,000 hogs. The history of the province's pork industry has been one of nearly constant consolidation. The trend towards fewer producers isn't likely to change.

ROBERT IRWIN