The attitude was positive, the enthusiasm high, and attendance even higher at the recent Manitoba Swine Seminar held in Winnipeg.

Following his state of the (pork) union address, Andrew Dickson, the general manager of the Manitoba Pork Council held a scrum with the farm media representatives.

Dickson referred to the growth in the pig industry slow but steady, not rapid expansion

“If we can get two or three percent slow but steady increase of the capacity of producing finished pig, we will over time, be able to make better use of our processing capacity,” he said. “One company, for example, has received approval to construct two finishing barns in Southwest Manitoba, working to get approval for four additional sites. These additional barns will bring them to a total of sixty thousand finisher places if they can get that achieved. They are at a comparable level with similar size plants in the United States regarding cost structure if you’re able to spread your fixed cost over more animals going through the processing plant.”

Dickson said producers are coming to Manitoba Pork Council with problems with their existing barns because of what’s happened over the last fifteen years as the pigs got bigger. Twenty years ago, the average weight of a pig going to market weighed 240-250 pounds and barns designed for that size.

“Well, when you go to 285 pounds the same number of pigs, you can’t fit them all in, meaning fewer pigs in your barn. Now, sows are producing more baby pigs increasing efficiency from say twenty weaned pigs per sow. Well now, guys are thinking twenty-five, twenty-six weaned pigs per sow, you’ve got an additional six pigs per sow per year going into barns designed to run the numbers from twenty years ago,” he said. “This leaves the producers short on capacity on their farms needing to build additional nursery and finishing capacity to properly use his sow barns with his current sow numbers. In fact, in some operations, they’ve cut back from five hundred sows farrow to finish to 400 sows farrow to finish. So they don’t have too many pigs produced from their sows to fill their other barns losing efficiency. Let’s phrase this as slow growth, an existing operation putting on a small finisher barn just to use capacity is not dramatic growth, but is significant when you add it up over everybody building a little capacity.”

Many pig farmers have aging facilities and need replacing, some approaching 30 to 40 years old. “Am I going to rebuild, of course, he’s going to rebuild, he wants to be in the pig business. Do I go with my current size or do I increase just a little bit while I’m at it? Sort of while I’m at it, I may as well build a little extra capacity and so,” Dickson said.

The MPC general manager said there are two markets for Manitoba pig producers a finisher pig business, and a weanling pig business. Those who want to produce weanlings, and they’ll ship them to Manitoba producers, or they’ll ship them to US producers; whoever gives them the best price in the long run.

“So we’re seeing more and more of those guys looking at contract production, they don’t get the high price, but then they don’t get the low prices, and they’ve got some certainty regarding markets,” he said. “But right now, it’s desirable, to ship weanlings to the US, which poses a problem for guys here, who just want to build a finisher barn. There are discussions ongoing between who wants to finish pigs and the weanling producers about longer term contracts. Where the guys get, and it’s usually a formula based things, that so the weanling producer makes a profit and so does the finisher pig guy make a profit.” •

— By Harry Siemens