To register as a commercial producer with the British Columbia Hog Marketing Commission, a farm must produce the equivalent of at least 300 market hogs/year. With only15 producers meeting that threshold, BC has among the smallest commercial hog sectors in Canada.
Despite that, the province could well have the largest number of hog producers in the country.
“About 1,200 producers are registered with Pig Trace in BC and we think the total number of BC hog producers could be somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000,” says BC Ministry of Agriculture dairy and swine specialist Tom Droppo. “Most produce between one and eight hogs/year although anecdotal evidence suggests quite a few market between 10 and 60 hogs/year.”
As a result, the BCMA has launched an education outreach initiative targeted at small lot producers. A subcontractor has been hired to draft information on legislation, cost of production, codes of practice, pig health and nutrition and environmental regulations into a multi-chapter Resource Binder.
The project is funded by the Investment Agriculture Foundation of BC through the Canadian Agricultural Partnership. Although the BC Pork Producers Association is the titular sponsor of the project, BCHMC and BCPPA general manager Christine Koch stresses the association has no direct involvement other than providing a conduit for the funding.
“Since our operations are funded solely by levies from just 15 producers, we don’t have the resources to get involved in or provide support to the small lot producers in our province,” Koch states.
The province has already produced binders for small lot poultry, sheep and goat producers and is using those as a template for the hog binder. It will take materials developed for commercial producers and distil it down for small lot, largely untrained, producers, Droppo said.
Once the binder has been completed, it will be posted on a “small lot producers” tab on the BC Pork website and be downloadable by all producers in the province. Since there is no association representing small lot hog producers, Droppo says there was no better option for disseminating the information than through the BC Pork website.
Koch admits that will probably generate additional calls from small lot producers but emphasizes BC Pork will only provide a portal for the information, Callers will be referred elsewhere (likely the ministry) as the BCPPA is only able to support registered BC hog producers.
Once the binder is complete, the ministry will hold one-day workshops on Vancouver Island and in the Lower Mainland, Okanagan, Kootenays and northern BC in February and March to present it to existing and aspiring small lot producers. A total of six workshops are planned. There will be no charge and everyone who attends will receive lunch and a hard copy of the resource binder to take home.
Droppo says the binder will include about 15 chapters covering all aspects of hog production and marketing, including details of applicable regulations.
“Our plan is to update the chapters online as new information becomes available so the material on the BC Pork website is always the most current. Producers who attended a Workshop will be able to go online to see what Chapters were updated and replace them in their binders,” Droppo said.
He says Canadian Pork Council is monitoring BC’s initiative to determine its impact and uptake.
“The commercial pork sector in Canada regards the small lot swine sector as one of its highest biosecurity risks to disease introduction. With BC’s high traffic in trade and people, and given the risk of African swine fever making its way to Canadian shores, we had to attempt to develop a comprehensive package of practical information targeted to small lot swine producers and make it easily accessible.” •
—By David Schmidt