Manitoba pork producers and industry partners attended the two fall producer meetings, one in Niverville and the other in Portage la Prairie. Dr. Egan Brockhoff, DVM, Veterinary Counselor for the Canadian Pork Council keynoted on High-Path PRRS—the next nightmare for hog farmers.

Andrew Dickson, the General Manager of Manitoba Pork, said Manitoba’s pork industry is making considerable strides regarding reducing its environmental footprint.

The Manitoba government is reviewing public input as it considers moving forward with its proposed “Red Tape Reduction and Government Efficiency Act.”

Dickson said presentations during last month’s public hearings show Manitoba has very high environmental standards built into its regulations dealing with livestock.

“They’re probably some of the stiffest, most stringent regulations in North America.

Anybody who wants to make any comparison only has to look at what goes on in Ontario or Saskatchewan or look at the jurisdictions in the United States and it will become apparent that Manitoba is a leader in this area,” he said. “For example in Manitoba, all of our operations are subject to audit. Producers file annual manure management plans and soil tests basing manure application on annual crop growth.”

Dickson talked about whether Bill 24, now in its third reading will help kick-start the building of new hog barns in Manitoba.

“The key thing is the amendment to the Environment Act to remove the requirement for anaerobic digesters. Anaerobic digesters are these one-and-a-half million dollar deals that you have to add on to the cost of building a barn. This is significant,” said Dickson. “By taking this out of the way and using standard systems to store and apply manure as used all across North America, this will remove a huge impediment to the industry. Now, we can start to look at whether we can build barns on a competitive basis to other provinces and the U.S.”

He said Manitoba has producers who need to build barns because they want to stay in business and they need to develop some extra capacity into their systems and, by taking away this requirement for an anaerobic digester, these operations can seriously look at literally rebuilding some of their structures. There’s pent-up demand for this from the last 10-15 years, and with four good years financially as an industry so when they go to talk to their financial institutions, they can show positive cash flows the last four years.

“It looks like we’re going to have reasonably positive cash flows for at least the next two years, and the processing companies are offering there are some incentives to get into finishing more pigs in the province, so there’s a huge opportunity here. It looks like grain prices are not going to go through the roof. In other words, they’re going to be reasonable grain prices that are competitive,” said Dickson. “We can import corn and soy meal from the United States at a reasonable price, and the big thing is the Canadian dollar is at about 80 cents, huge for our industry. It makes our industry now competitive with the U.S. in lots of ways.”

He said Manitoba hog producers have this tremendous opportunity in front of them regarding the processing plants being short on pigs. They don’t have to build any extra facilities. They just need to get more pigs into the processing plant. They can hire some more people, put some additional cold storage into place, and away we go. They’re short product. The Canadian product is in demand across the world, and no one has any pork in storage.

“In most cases, these are going to be multimillion-dollar investments in their facilities so, therefore, you have to take the time out to do it properly regarding meeting all the regulatory requirements that the province has, meeting all the planning requirements at the municipal level. These are not simple. They’re complex, as they are for any other business, by the way. We’re not unique in this,” said the MPC general manager. “It takes time, and it’s going to cost some money. But there are people with much expertise, and we are prepared to help bring those people together with the farmers to smooth the process to avoid conflict at the municipal level because they’re following all the right procedures and they can get timely approval for all their permits from the province without a lot of problems.”

Dickson said the industry had learned a lot of lessons from doing this in the last 20 years.

“Let’s apply what we’ve learned and speed up the process a little bit, things can go smoothly, and people can start getting into a business and start making money,” he said. •

— By Harry Siemens