The Manitoba government continues to thwart hog expansion in Manitoba with its stringent and none-bending environmental regulations blaming a good part on farming say farmers.
In attempting to change the minds of local MLA’s to put pressure on the government, Manitoba Pork is asking the business community to get involved in the hog moratorium debate.
Gerald Waldner, hog boss of the Blooming Prairie Colony at Homewood, MB and a district advisor for Manitoba Pork says Manitoba needs hog production to expand in the province because Maple Leaf Foods is running short on hogs for their Brandon plant.
“The government wants zero pollution on the hog manure which is impossible,” said Waldner.
He says no matter what, despite doing the best in looking after their business according to the regulations, with everything in tip top shape and all that stuff, the government refuses to budge.

“We want the public, the business communities, and the media to help convince their MLA’s that the producers are doing the best we can, and it isn’t nearly as bad as government makes us out to be,” said Waldner from the colony’s hog barn near Homewood.
He doesn’t for one minute think producers should be able to expand in all areas, especially where hog production is maxed out but to look for those areas where farmers can use the manure for their fields and producers can expand.
We’re following all the manure codes when we inject that stuff.
The Blooming Prairie colony runs an 850 sow farrow to finish system, farms 4,000 acres and can inject manure on at least three quarters of that land base within three miles of the barn.
“Right now we are not looking at expanding but their mother colony, Rose Valley, ten miles west of Carman is short of finisher space,” said Waldner. “And has the land base to expand, but can’t.”

With hog prices good and feed prices low, things for the hog industry looks good for the next year, he says.
“With the abundant crops coming off in the U.S., the feed prices will drop even more making it still more profitable to raise pigs.”
Karl Kynoch, chair of Manitoba Pork agrees with Waldner calling on the province’s business community to apply pressure on their local MLAs to rethink provincial government policies dramatically reducing the volumes of hogs produced for processing.
The Manitoba government imposed strict regulations in 2011 that shut down expansion impacting the ability of Manitoba’s pork processors to access the volumes of hogs needed to maintain capacity.
Kynoch told members of the Brandon Chamber of Commerce recently hog production has contributed greatly to Manitoba’s GDP, but the hog moratorium is jeopardizing that economic spin-off.
“Business brings people and again that turns into more business, more housing, spin-off,” said Kynoch. “All those people working at the Maple Leaf plant, they’re all shopping for groceries, going to Tim Horton’s, going to other coffee shops but they spend money in Brandon and when you spend money it just generates the economy and keeps the cycle going.”
Kynoch challenged the Brandon businesses to help educate some of the MLAs to present all the positive things producers do in handling the manure.
“I think if our chamber members and members of the public can pressure their MLAs to do that would be probably one of the biggest things they could do,” he adds. “Even if the government approved new barn construction today, it would still take two years before those barns would be producing hogs.” •
— By Harry Siemens