Changes in both venue and management appear to have had little impact on the quality of Red Deer’s annual Swine Technology Workshop, held on October 24.

This year, the workshop was offered in one of the pavilions at Westerner Park and operated in-house by the team from Alberta Pork, with support of a solid crew of sponsors. A couple of highly animated speakers certainly helped warm things up after an unknown person or people decided to open one of the pavilion’s enormous back doors, sending a blast of cold air through the room. No harm, no foul – participants moved a little closer to their coffee cups and the learning continued.

Previous workshops were held at the Sheraton Hotel in Red Deer, the only notable change in the workshop itself was Alberta Pork’s decision to cut back on effort and costs by eliminating copies of the day’s proceedings from the package offered to attendees.

Participants were taken through a broad range of themes, opening in the morning with a presentation on risk management and forward contracting, and then capping off with world-renowned Veterinarian John Carr’s sobering presentation on African Swine Fever.

Speakers highlighted loose housing in the gestation room, gave an update on Alberta’s farm safety programs, discussed improving boar performance and provided at alternate look at ways to manage the farm team.

RISK MANAGEMENT

Consultant Herman Simons and Alberta Agriculture and Forestry specialist Ron Gietz each offered tips on risk management and forward contracting.

Gietz set up a variety of popular game shows to demonstrate how producers can make different marketing choices and what outcomes they can anticipate from those choices.

“I’ve come to a few conclusions in terms of risk management approaches. The problem for a hog producer is, you’re continually speculating on hog prices. So, every 16 sows you breed, that’s like buying a lean hog futures contract,” said Gietz.

“You’re always betting on the price going higher. Of course, it’s only about half the time that that’s what happens.”

The risk can be offset by contract or the pigs can be sold on the futures, but how do you make those decisions?

“I believe you should be making your decisions on projected margins in the future and have a target for each group of pigs. I also believe that must be realistic for the time of year,” said Gietz.

There are periods within the calendar year that, historically, are better or poorer than others, he said. For example, a normal target for December and January, when prices are typically lower, might be to accept a $10 loss.

“Other times of year, like in summer, you’re typically making $25 a head, so you want to be a bit more choosy in terms of locking in prices.”

Overall, most growth in Canada’s hog industry is on the export side, making it vital to keep major diseases from entering the country and closing off those markets.

Herman Simons, an independent contractor and former chair of Alberta Pork, spoke about the differences between hedging and speculating and the effects of those approaches.

“If you keep thinking and approaching hedging the same way you do with speculating on the cash market, you’re going to be disappointed relatively often,” said Simons.

“My argument is that most of us are still speculators,” he said in addressing emotional responses to market cycles, from euphoria to panic, for those who have not properly hedged against the peaks and valleys.

“All those emotions happened to me on a regular basis. We all know there is a huge cycle within our industry. There is a point where it’s at the top and there is a point where it’s at the bottom, but I don’t know where that is. I’d like to know. Can you tell me? Who can foresee the future? Is there anybody here who can tell me where the price will be next year?”

Producers need to understand seasonal effects and where the markets are within a cycle of roughly four to five years, so they can lay out a well-considered marketing plan that will knock off the peaks and fill in the valleys.

Under such a plan, the producer may never see the highest or the lowest prices but should be able to write contracts that will capitalize on long-term trends rather than short-term volatility while eliminating the emotional highs and lows that come with speculating in on the cash market.

Successful risk management involves setting down goals, knowing your costs of production, and then deciding how to proceed, said Simons.

“If you want to work in the market and you want to take out hedging positions, it better be better than what you would otherwise be getting in the cash market. It all depends on the individual’s situation – some are more cash rich than others and so can manage the down side more.

“You have to understand where you’re coming from to determine where your objectives have to lie. If you don’t know how to hedge and if you don’t understand the tool you are working with, you might get burned,” he said.

TEAM MANAGEMENT

Veterinarian Sarah Probst-Miller of AgCreate Solutions Inc. in Monticello, Illinois gave a rousing presentation on building and supporting farm teams. Using the entire room as her model, Probst-Miller performed a variety of exercises with people in the room, starting by having people toss around an imaginary ball. After three or four passes, someone dropped the ball and it disappeared.

“What happens when you have a lot of priorities and a lot of things are going on? When we have priorities, what is the number one thing we need to do well? As animals, we do one of three things. We either participate or we start to get stressed and we either fight or run away or we freeze and play dead.

When people have priorities, the first thing they need to do well is communicate them, said Probst-Miller, who had correctly anticipated that someone would drop the imaginary ball.

“What I heard you guys say before I threw that ball that we took care of, is we looked at each other. We made sure that person knew that they were the one that was going to receive that ball. We nodded at them, and then we made sure that they caught it.”

She used a second exercise to help people find out how they operate under stress. Do you jump in, or do you read instructions first? Do you question or do you accept? She then had people move to different parts of the room, based on where they fit on the grid she had asked them to draw.

The first group was motivated by a promise of results. The second group was more motivated by concerns about the impact on others while the third group needed to know how they were expected to play the game. The final group wanted to know the reasons for the task at hand.

“When we have a priority, we must communicate in a way that reaches people. You have to take the time to take that step towards people, otherwise you will not be an effective manager,” said Probst-Miller.

“The words we choose when we teach are critically important, because it changes how we behave,” she said.

The number one priority on a pig farm should be excellent pig care.

“If we don’t offer this, we lose the right to care for animals,” said Probst-Miller.

AFRICAN SWINE FEVER

Participants got to hear twice from Australia-based producer and veterinarian John Carr, whose no-nonsense approach has helped him earn attention in swine production around the world.

In his second address, Carr pointed to border security as the most likely leak through which African Swine Fever will enter Canada. While not as contagious as porcine epidemic diarrhea, Swine Fever is persistent in cured or smoked meats, which is the vehicle which Carr believes carried the disease across Europe. Wild boars are generally resistant to the disease, but become carriers when exposed to contaminated meats, which is thought to be the case in Europe. The theory is that poorly paid truckers from Ukraine were packing lunches from home and throwing their leftovers out the window. Wild animals, including pigs, picked up the disease by eating meat from the discarded lunches.

“Is African Fever a threat to Canada? No more than ever,” Carr said at the outset of his presentation. The disease has persisted for decades in Africa, carried by wild pigs that do not suffer the clinic symptoms that are fatal to domestic cousins.

The most likely point of entry here is via illegal meat smuggled in by someone returning from one of the countries where the disease is now prevalent, including China, said Carr.

“A couple of days ago, the Japanese government found African Swine Fever in some pork smuggled in from China. I came on Saturday to Vancouver. The guys at the border asked me who I was and I told them I was travelling to Red Deer and Calgary.”

When questioned about the purpose for his visit, Carr said he was a veterinarian and he was going to talk about African Swine Fever and that he had been to China. “There was absolutely zero reaction. His only question was, ‘Do you have a work permit?’

” That lackadaisical approach to a serious threat is not acceptable, said Carr. He encouraged Alberta Pork and its members to lobby the government for a higher level of security concerning people coming in from countries that have the disease.

“Your defense is at the borders. We have a lot of people from China coming in. It will come in through the ports. We need to talk to guys at the ports, and that includes the United States. Tell them that we are a nation exporting pork and if we get African Swine Fever, we are going to have to eat that pork ourselves.”

He encouraged Alberta farmers to take the disease very seriously and not to wait for clinical signs to exercise precautions, including washing their hands thoroughly after every meal and making sure that the pigs in their barns are effectively buffered from any animals that may be wandering around outside.

Whether the outbreak in China will open new markets for Canadian pork is another issue, said Carr. China has 46 per cent of all the pigs in the world, with 1.5 billion animals supplying an average of 40 kilograms of pork per person per year, he said.

Canada’s 14 million pigs supply a domestic market that consumes 22 kilograms of pigs per person per year.

“If China wants pork, she could eat all of Canada’s (annual) production in a week,” said Carr.

Updated information about ASF and other disease issues is available on the Resource page within the Alberta Pork website.

Proceedings from the workshop are also posted on the site, at www.albertapork.com/red-deer-swine-technology-workshop •

— By Brenda Kossowan