Swine people in Western Canada are poised to say farewell in the next few weeks to two men who have put a massive amount of passion and energy into improving their bottom lines.

Alberta Pork Chair Frank Novak’s term on the board of directors will expire on April 20, leaving the new board to be elected that day to choose a chair from among its ranks.

Additionally, Prairie Swine Centre’s Lee Whittington announced during the Saskatchewan Symposium in November that he will retire from his position as President and CEO, effective June 30.

Both men were passionate in their efforts to improve the industry, and that passion will be missed, says Jim Haggins, former chair of Alberta Pork.

“Lee has dedicated the majority of his career to the development, expansion and overall success of the Prairie Swine Centre as an internationally recognized pork industry research organization. Throughout his many roles in the PSC’s development, he and his colleagues have commanded respect from their peers as the Centre became a significant player in both the Canadian and International pork research industries,” said Haggins.

“Frank’s leadership skills and knowledge of the pork industry have served the Alberta industry well during his tenure as director and chairman of the board of Alberta Pork,” said Haggins.

“He, along with the board and Darcy Fitzgerald and the Alberta Pork administrative team, have expanded the role that the organization plays in keeping producers and other affiliated industry partners informed and prepared to address the many challenges that have faced them,” he said.

“Frank’s direct involvement representing AP at the Canadian Pork Council and in interprovincial matters has been a great asset to the Canadian pork industry in general.”

Prairie Hog Country chatted with Whittington and Novak during the 2018 Banff Pork Seminar.

Whittington had been working as a swine nutritionist in Ontario, directing a sales team for a feed supply company when he was recruited in 1992 to help revive and rebuild the Prairie Swine Centre.

The business of supplying feed had been through something of a revolution at the time, becoming intensely specialized as producers across all livestock sectors began demanding more finely-tuned formulations for their stock.

“The technical side had become so technical that a sales rep couldn’t talk cattle in the morning and pigs and poultry all day and be credible, because producers were raising the bar on what was required in order to get their business,” said Whittington.

“So, I developed one of the first teams of taking our best sales people and saying, OK you guys are just focusing on swine, so your territories are going to be bigger, but your focus is going to be narrower.

It proved to be a very good model and a big change from what a salesman used to do.”

Shifting paradigms were also at play at the University of Saskatchewan’s swine research centre, which had been set up in 1980. The university wanted to empty the barns and close the facility because it was tired of covering the losses, says Whittington. Industry valued the research, however. So, after a period of negotiation and with the support of dollars provided from the industry, the university recruited John Patience to design and set up a new business that would conduct applied research in areas of importance to producers.

Patience recruited Whittington in June of 1992 as information officer, in charge of ensuring that the research would be made widely available and to develop relationships with industry to ensure that the funds would continue to flow. Whittington was named President and CEO in 2009, after Patience left PSC to take a position at the Iowa State University.

Since its inception, PSC has grown in both size and scope, while its core values have remained rooted in the vision of its founders.

“The basic model remains the same, in that we have a relationship with industry and some of the check-off monies form our base budget,” said Whittington.

What had started as a Saskatchewan-based project expanded across Western Canada and eventually became a national and world leader in finding and evaluating products and practices that were viable for farmers.

“We started with a focus on here’s our three research scientists and here’s the three or four projects a year that they are doing to now. It’s all about major collaborations. If a scientist is going to be successful, they’re not just collaborating with people across Canada, but maybe around the globe to bring in those techniques and expertise that they don’t have in their own little group,” he said.

“Credibility is the big thing that probably separates Prairie Swine Centre from an organization that does general research. We want (a research project) to be on the farm within six months to six years, so people know that by the time we’re publishing it and talking about it, it’s going to work.”

Whittington says there are no obvious candidates yet for his position, but that PSC has been actively recruiting and the new President and CEO will come into an institution that’s in great shape.

“I think we’re going to get some interesting applications. I’m going to stick around and make sure we are on-board the new person correctly, and it’s hard to say when that will be, but I’ll be back in to do it whenever that happens.

“My objective was to make sure that the swine centre was poised to be successful, because it’s had lots of challenges as a not-for-profit corp. The next person we bring in doesn’t have to fight fires. They can take the time to understand what’s the future, where to you want to be 20 years from now, because the industry has changed a lot.

You come to places like this (Banff Pork Seminar), there’s a lot of young people here. You should have seen the young people that were at the Saskatchewan Symposium – and that’s the thing that was missing.

While he may be stepping back from a demanding job, Whittington has no plans to rest. He expects to devote more time to his family’s berry farm and processing business, and he plans to brush up his skills as a Level 2 sommelier.

Novak, Managing Director of Alberta Pig Company and Sunhaven Farms, was first elected to the Alberta Pork board in the spring of 2012, and was named chair a few weeks later, after Haggins announced that he had finished farming and would therefore have to leave the board.

Novak says the industry has been through a great deal of change in that time, although there has been little movement on some of the things he would have liked to change.

Alberta Pork’s success so far in meeting the challenge of porcine epidemic diarrhea was probably one of its biggest accomplishments, he says.

“Over the number of years that I’ve been on the board, certainly the issue of disease surveillance and the fallout from disease outbreaks has really come to the fore. I think as a group and as an industry, we did a good job of dealing with that particular risk, and I think it has really changed the mindset of the industry. We’ve now got a very strong surveillance program in place and I think that was a really important thing to have happen, and it happened at the expense of somebody other than us,” he said.

“Our biosecurity was probably always better than a lot of people, but it wasn’t as good as it needed be, given the way the world is now with international trade and just the number of bugs that are moving around the world.

“It really woke everybody up, and now we have a much more active surveillance system and a more active management mentality in the industry. That’s critical, because that will continue to be our biggest risk from a disaster perspective, and one that will get bigger and not smaller.”

Where disease is concerned, Novak says the biggest risk in Alberta now arises from the presence of small, niche producers whose pigs are housed outside and therefore are not under the same controls as commercial barns.

“We’re really aware of that as a risk for our industry, because that’s the place where it could happen. We just need the wrong migratory bird to fly over the wrong outdoor producer at the wrong moment,” said Novak.

While biosecurity has ramped up exponentially, Novak says he is disappointed that he was not able to achieve more movement on the way hogs are priced in Western Canada.

“I think there’s considerably more awareness and understanding on that, but we haven’t made the kind of progress that I think we need to make in order to make the Western Canadian industry more sustainable and more viable and to deal with what I think is a real risk, which is the cash market disappearing on us, and then we’re scrambling to find something that works.”

Novak has been pushing to have the price farmers are paid for their hogs tied more directly to the cut-out. His view was supported at Banff Pork Seminar by Missouri-based economist Ron Plain.

“You saw the numbers from Ron Plain saying there is a growing percentage of hogs in the US that are having their value priced, in one way or another, off the cut-out. Also, all these new packing plants that are, for the large part producer owned, is really producers doing exactly what I’m saying. There will be more and more of it in the future, and I don’t understand why we need to be dragged, kicking and screaming into where we will end up almost for sure,” said Novak.

“Change is hard. At the risk of offending a processor or two in Western Canada, part of their business model has been to buy pigs cheap, right? And when you do this other thing and it becomes more transparent, then maybe they give up their margins. But my view is that they’ve been so good at buying them cheap, that maybe they’ve lost a whole pile of supply.

“At the end of the day, our hogs become pork. So, it would make sense to me that the value of our hog should be driven by the value of the product that is made with our hog. If that pork is worth more, we should get paid more. And if it’s worth less, then we should get paid less.

“It should align our incentives directly with the processor, because we’re both producing the same thing, and our fortunes are going to go up and down together, which means that we have to work on the same things in terms of quality or whatever other attributes make is easier to sell more pork for a better price.”

Novak believes the existing model of pricing hogs off the cash market is what has driven “hundreds and hundreds” of competent producers out of the business. He finds the situation infallible in a region that has so many advantages, including space, high health, clean air and clean water.

“Now, the long-term outcome is, the supply isn’t there anymore. So now, you have these big fancy packing plants running at 75 per cent capacity because there are no pigs. One of the simple rules of the world that applies for sure is, you know the money follows profit and, if there is no profit the money disappears, and that’s what’s happened in production in Western Canada. Our production has shrunk, and when you look and see what’s happened in the US, you just have to look at the numbers. They’re growing all the time, and they only do that because of the money.”

Novak says he has been actively encouraging producers he knows to offer some of their time on Alberta Pork’s board of directors, acknowledging that the pool of people available has continued to shrink with the province now down to about 350 farms. “You learn a lot and I know I have a much better perspective of where our industry fits,” he said.

“You go in with a lot of ideas and you find out which of them work. You find out that you don’t get your way, but you will find out that there is a lot of really good, smart people in our industry, and they’re people you will like to spend time around because you will learn from them.

“I’ve had the privilege of being on the national board and the board here in Alberta where there are some really good, progressive producers who also stepped up and were on the board and I’ve learned a pile from them. Now, I consider a lot of those people friends that I can call when I need to learn more.”

The next chairman will have further commitments, including participation on the Canadian Pork Council, which meets quarterly in Ottawa.

“We’re survivors, and we’re very much focused on doing what we need to do, and that certainly spills over in the board meetings. It’s nice to be able to go to a board meeting . . . where everybody wants to do the right thing, there are no alternative agendas. The politics in Alberta has been really minimal . . . and the CPC has been pretty much like that as well.

“I don’t regret doing it for a second and hope whoever comes after me can say the same thing after their tenure is up.” •

— By Brenda Kossowan