Ten years ago, Arian de Bekker helped develop an agricultural co-operative (Independent Hog Farmers Co-op Inc.) specifically for independent pig farmers. Its aim to combine the volume of production to access opportunities in purchasing goods and farm insurance and provide technical and management education.
De Bekker said the co-op formed officially in 2011, but existed for several years before that, where hog farmers got together to compare notes.
“To open the books and look at how they run their operations, the costs, and performance levels,” he said. “Within the co-op, we work on farm insurance provided at an attractive rate to all these farms.”
The co-op first formed with 22 members, and today 43 members are representing about 65,000 sows. The members are independent producers in Manitoba, non-Hutterites. He knows of several other independent producers that aren’t members. So there are still independent producers out there.
Independent Hog Farmers Co-op Inc. provides aside from insurance; there is benchmarking that takes place while restricted somewhat by COVID-19 now, before they did workshops, including management, fire management workshops, but also practical workshops, such as First Aid courses.
“We work closely with the Manitoba Pork Council. The co-op and its membership is an interesting option for independent producers because large integrators do a lot of that work within their company with all the farms that operate within the integration,” said de Bekker. “But where do independents go? And so together, you can be a lot stronger.”
He said the co-op isn’t into marketing on behalf of producers but has lots of conversation within the group about other things they can do for themselves. There are quite a variety of producers, and they haven’t found a consensus on what to do from a marketing perspective. At one point, they worked on feed ingredient purchasing. That went as far as doing market analysis and research, and that ran for a couple of years, and that was good.
“What you find with independent producers is that it’s sometimes difficult to find consensus as I said before. So if there are groups like Hams Marketing, we leave it up to them,” he said. “Some of them are weanling producers, and they wouldn’t be working with Hams Marketing, but they will have their weanling brokers that they’re working with and so we’re not stepping into that, either.” •
— By Harry Siemens