Prairie Livestock Expo in its third year, formerly called the Hog and Poultry Days. It’s a one-stop shopping event, showcasing the latest technology and information for all livestock production needs! Here farmers, consumers of the equipment, services, and technology can learn about the most recent developments in animal handling, feed additives, housing systems, feeding equipment, odour control, composting and manure application.

Andrew Dickson, the general manager of the Manitoba Pork Council and chair of the organizing committee of the PLE explains how the current venue evolved from the first one.

“We used to be Hog Days, then Hog and Poultry Days down at the Convention Center in downtown Winnipeg, and then we moved up to here. And some years ago we realized that the same companies that are talking to the hog and poultry people are also talking to the beef guys, the sheep guys, the dairy guys, and so on,” said Dickson at the beginning of year’s event. “We decided to expand the format and call it Prairie Livestock Expo, so that the same companies, it saved them some staff time and reached a wider audience concerning essentially the same products and services they offer to other people. So, the intent here was to sort of widen it out. Building up this show will take time. There are other big shows more specialized and time will tell how this evolves.

The Winnipeg venue alternates with the Keystone Centre in Brandon, MB, so each location hosts the event every two years. With over 160 exhibits, 700-800 people, it may not be huge regarding numbers, but the people walking in are making significant investment decisions here.

“There’s a lot of significant investment capital walking around the room, maybe the salespeople and the companies have met many of these people before, but it’s a bit of a social occasion too, people get together, and they can see everything in one place,” he said.

Dickson thought for a moment how things had changed when the show first started back in 1996 when talking about how they had to go home and do the chores or look after the livestock.

“With automated equipment these days, it’s amazing how that chore thing has changed. Much of those chores are quite sophisticated,” he said. “People use their cell phones to look at records, checking on their barns, and automatic feedings systems look after the nutritional breaks for the animals, but there’s still all the animal care that has to go in.”

It frees up the producers’ time to do the real things to look after the care of the animals, to pick out the ones that aren’t doing so well, treat them, and turn them into productive animals.

A livestock expo like this indicates the various industries are doing ok and with the capital ‘walking around’ the exhibition some positive things are happening.

“We see in hogs, as in some of the other species, a rebuilding going on, so people’s facilities are getting older and need replacing. Say a producer owns a 500 to 600 sow, farrow to finish operation, now they’re looking either at becoming larger and specializing, or they’re going to maybe even double in size,” said Dickson. “We see an expansion in dairy, poultry, and sheep in this province. I think Manitoba’s in a unique position, with half our farm income, from livestock, and there are huge opportunities in the world market for meat products. Contrary to some of the stuff you might’ve heard, that we’re all moving to become vegetarian, our sales are up, so obviously someone’s eating it.”

Pork export markets continue to increase and for example, China 10 years ago, might’ve sold them $7 or $8 million worth, last year $123 million worth of stuff from Manitoba. Japan is steady and profitable with sales previous year sales over $460 million or something, and that’s just from Manitoba with 90 per cent of pork production exported out.

The United States is still a significant market sending them about $260 million worth of pork products and the US is the major exporter in the world.

“So, when you think about that, here we are selling high-value product into a very sophisticated market that has huge production, and we still sell them 2 1/2 million weanlings,” he said. •

— By Harry Siemens