NOT IN MY BACKYARD
By DON STONEMAN
Expanding operators risk finding themselves at the sharp end of their toughest critics: their farming neighbours.There has been a "surprising backlash in the rural community" towards new pig barns, warns Franklin Kains of Fergus, Ontario agriculture ministry swine housing specialist. Others in the farming community are less than enamoured with porcines, he warns.
Farmers should resist the temptation to shorten the lane ways to their barns to save on costs. It's important that new barns are at least as far away from neighbours as the minimum distance separation (MDS) rules demand. Those who cut corners now will pay later.
"If neighbours find out that you have been given any leeway in locating the barn, that is just giving them a bullet for their gun. You are asking for problems to fester for a long time," says Kains.
Stratford-based agricultural engineer Jim Weeden, raised on a Bruce county pig farm, says operators must realize that concerns about these new barns are coming from other farmers. "It's a myth" that complaints come from non-farm people who move to the country "expecting things to be a certain way. So do people who have lived there all their life," says Weeden.
Heightened concern in the community is linked to the degree of expansion, he says. If an operation is doubled in size, "people don't notice. If you take the same base land and plunk down a barn with 3,000 feeder hogs, everything that happens in your township is your fault."
Weeden says the land base to spread manure is causing the greatest concern for municipalities when a farmer wants to expand. Possible pollution of wells and streams is just as much of a concern as odour. The environment ministry requires farmers have a place to spread the manure and get a certificate of compliance before a building permit is issued to raise a barn.
There must be a minimum of one acre of land for every livestock unit. Four market hogs equal one unit; so do five sows or boars, or 20 weaner pigs. A 1,000-feeder hog barn must be placed on a minimum land base of 250 acres.
Weeden says farmers can get by with less land if they hire a consultant to develop a nutrient management plan. "We are working on what a trained consultant will be at this time," Weeden says.
The nutrient plan would take into account feed changes and manure sold off the farm.
There are other questions about the land base needed that are being raised in municipalities. Is it the land you own on this deed where the barn is, or is land on another deed also counting towards manure management? Is land rented on a long-term lease and a semi-formal manure application agreement also eligible?
There are strong concerns about the amount of traffic that will be generated on roads when manure spreading is on.
"This is causing municipalities the greatest heartburn now," Weeden says. They are ready to enact manure bylaws because of concerns about too many operations, worried neighbours and the effects of manure spills on water supplies and creeks.
The municipality is insistent that the manure is going to be spread properly, not just dumped onto the 300 acres closest to the barns. The issue won't go away, Weeden says. In the last 10 days of February, he talked to three builders who planned to construct 4,000 feeder-pig operations in Perth county alone. Each of those barns is going to require 1,000 acres of land to dispose of the manure. "Is the guy willing to stop production if he doesn't have enough land to spread the manure?" The municipalities are worried about liability if they grant a building permit for a barn and later wells are polluted, Weeden says. They don't know what all the legal implications.
A nutrient management plan involves bringing in a consultant to put together a cropping and fertilizer plan to use the manure that is being spread from the barns. It may be different than an average three-year rotation, Weeden says. The farmer "may have done extensive sampling and have better figures" on what the soil and crops can handle.
Most farmers are doing a good job of putting land together to spread manure, says Bert Vorstenbosh of Mitchell, deputy reeve of Fullarton township, an executive member of the Rural Ontario Municipalities Association (ROMA), and member of the Farm Practices Protection Board. He and his son are planning to build a 2,400-head finishing barn and have 500 acres in place to spread the manure.
His township has several farmers where 4,000 finishing pigs are raised at once. Vorstenbosh says farmers in his area are generally environmentally conscious and many have developed environmental farm plans. Where there may be a conflict, he thinks, is when livestock farmers and the county's four municipal sewage plant operators want to spread effluent at the same time.
Building boom a bust at packing plant
Last year's barn building boom and declining Ontario pig marketings just don't add up, says Fergus-based agriculture engineer Franklin Kains.His survey of major farm building contractors shows new barns built last year should be sending an additional 300,000 pigs to market. "We still don't see it," he says. Output is only up about 30,000 for 1996. Weekly marketings late in the year were down 1,000 pigs a week from the same time in 1995.
He wonders if the new construction is "just barely keeping up" with the old barns that are being retired and taken out of the province's pig finishing capacity.
Last year, in Perth county alone, farmers applied for building permits worth $24.4 million, says Ontario Ministry of Agriculture waste management specialist Don Hilborn. Perth county pork producers are spending about 40 per cent of the money. In neighbouring Oxford county, farmers filed their intentions to spend $16.7 million to modernize existing structures or build new barns. Statistics for other counties were unavailable.
Kain's survey revealed that 23 major contractors put up barns with a capacity for nearly twice as many finishing pigs as new barns built in 1995, which was an increase in the pig-raising capacity built in 1994. Barns were mostly built on properties where there had been one pig facility before.
The last big flurry of pig barn construction took place between 1975 and 1979, raising weekly pig slaughter to 90,000 from 50,000.
The new flurry of pig barn building "is about time," Kain says. "We have not had a nice steady replacement of barns over the years."
Not all the contractors queried returned the surveys. One contractor indicated that he was far too busy building barns this year to talk about barns he built last year, Kains says.
The barn building boom is expected to continue into this year, with space for as many pigs being built this year as in 1996.-DS
By RON MACDONALD
Much press has been devoted to the southeast U.S. production units and the capital investment necessary. We naturally compare our costs, complicated by a lower dollar.Many producers are concerned that higher capital costs will force Ontario out of the pig production business. A closer look will put this into perspective.
Current Ontario prices for a 1,000-head finisher barn, well built, insulated concrete or stud wall structure with manure storage range from $225 to $275 per pig space. This price would include the bare ground service requirements (hydro, well, gravel driveway) plus the building, feeding storage and delivery, office, shower, and below-floor manure storage. This unit could be mechanically or naturally ventilated.
Let's track the cost of a pig space, capitalization only, with some assumptions:
- Ten-year loan at eight-per-cent interest, amortized twice a year;
- Building life of 20-plus years before major renovation required (floor, feed, penning, ventilation);
- Building shell life of 40-plus years before complete renovation or demolition required;
- Turns per year: 3.2;
- No penalty or premium performance payments;
- $225, $250 or $275 in capitalization.When contemplating a project, be sure that reductions in capital costs do not hurt performance. For each of these examples, the cost of capital and interest repayment per hog marketed over 10 years is .045 cents for every $1 saved in capital costs.
There are several points to be aware of when shaving dollars off a building:
- A building that does not provide a good environment during extreme weather conditions (hot summer, cold winter or fluctuating spring and fall days) can easily result in sick pigs, causing medication costs, lower feed conversion and more days to market;
- Equipment or components that do not last completely change the economic picture. For example, feeders and penning that need repairs and replacement at 10 years add significant costs. Needing to replace a floor in 10 years would create an economic disaster;
- A one-point change in feed conversion costs about $2 to $2.50 per hog, depending on current feed prices. If the tools are not there to optimize feed conversion, capital and interest costs look like a better value;
- Slower rotations or turns per year can also affect costs. For example, the capital cost of $10.16 per hog at 3.2 turns per year increases to $11.21 per hog at 2.9 turns per year. This additional 10 per cent cost per hog easily offsets a 10-per-cent savings in capitalization costs;
- Operator efficiency is a major factor. If a building is laid out so that the operator or hired help has to take extra time or is tempted to cut corners due to poor systems and layout, then there can easily be increased costs of production or lost revenues.
Ron MacDonald is a Guelph-based agricultural engineer.
Something lost in the translation
By ROBERT IRWIN
Did Quebec pork producers really earn an average $2.96 per pig more than their Ontario counterparts last year?Quebec pork board records show that average wasn't a one-year phenomenon. For the past three years, Quebec producers averaged $2.50 per hog above Ontario producers.
Ontario Pork Producers Marketing Board (OPPMB) director of operational services and technical industry development, Rick Scragg, disputes the Quebec numbers. OPPMB records show the Ontario pool averaged $189.31 last year compared to Quebec's $188.73.
The Quebec pork board's auction began in 1989. This followed years of prices which languished behind Ontario's, and averaged $10 per pig below the U.S. The F?d?ration des producteurs de porcs du Quebec (FPPQ) auction brought Quebec prices to within $4 of an average Illinois-Indiana pig which is lower in quality.
One difference between Ontario and Quebec is that individual Ontario producers can contract with packers or use the auction at will.
Since 1994, Quebec has used a different type of contracting to accompany the auction. Seventy-two per cent of Quebec pigs are now contracted through the FPPQ, with the lion's share going to Olymel, Quebec's major exporter. Pigs are allocated to packers according to the previous year's market share on a formula based on the value of an average Illinois- Indiana hog.
Quebec pool price is a weighted average of the contract price and the auction. Auction prices are usually $10 to $20 higher than the contract but can also be lower.
"We do have kind of a dual system but it's a dual collective system," says FPPQ marketing adviser Gilbert Lavoie.
Quebec's Abattoir St. Alexandre buys approximately 2,000 eastern Ontario hogs weekly under contract but other Quebec packers have renewed interest in the Ontario auction in recent weeks.
In March, there were about 1,000 pigs a week going through the OPPMB auction to Quebec. According to Scragg, this may be a temporary phenomenon as packers scramble for market share amidst Quebec weekly hog runs, which have declined to around 100,000.
An industry-wide steering committee which Lavoie refers to as a "round table" helps make the Quebec system work. Lavoie says the committee is responsible for creating Quebec's higher prices. Membership includes labour unions, feed mills, producers, packers and government.
From the outset, it was clear that Quebec packers could compete better in export markets, where 40 per cent of the province's production ends up, if they had better assurance of supply. "When you sell to the Japanese market, which is a very lucrative one, you have to be sure that you have the required volume," Lavoie says.
When packers' needs are met, they can afford to pay more for pigs, he says.
Ontario's packing industry, chronically short of hogs in recent years, is losing pigs to American slaughterhouses, according to Scragg. Many worry Ontario jobs are going south along with the pigs.
"The processors here are starting to learn that when they don't bid appropriately on that auction, we see a lot of hogs leave the province," Scragg says.
FPPQ data generated by an Agriculture Canada input-output model shows the 5.2 million hogs produced annually in Quebec generate $2.5 billion of economic activity and 30,000 jobs.
There are no figures available for the Ontario industry. However, an OMAFRA committee is trying to assemble some.
While the two boards disagree over whose pigs sold for more money, Lavoie's message is the same as one delivered by Julien Den Tandt, OPPMB chief executive officer. Den Tandt told the recent OPPMB annual meeting of missed export opportunities and Canada's drop from supplying 20 per cent of Japanese import markets to less than six per cent.
There's not much shelter from savage SAMS storm
By S. ERNEST SANFORD
In September, 1995, a 1,200-sow herd in the U.S. Midwest was devastated by over 250 abortions and 50 sow deaths in a four to five-week period.Abortions occurred at all stages of gestation. In the 20 months since, some 36 similar outbreaks have been reported from several Midwest states and North Carolina. In addition, two herds in Quebec and one in Ontario have had similar outbreaks. Over the last year, outbreaks have been concentrated in southeast Iowa, which accounts for 60 per cent of all documented cases to date.
These outbreaks of sow mortality and high rates of abortion are known as Sow Abortion and Mortality Syndrome (SAMS). Other names include Atypical PRRS (Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome) and Southeast Iowa Abortion Syndrome.
An outbreak typically lasts two to five weeks and occurs predominantly in larger herds (800 sows or more). Most outbreaks have occurred in herds undergoing rapid expansion, doubling or even tripling in size, with large numbers of gilts, often without adequate isolation and quarantine. Herds usually return to previous levels of production after the storm passes.
A few herds have experienced another SAMS storm six to eight months later. A repeat storm tends to be less severe and affects mostly the younger replacements introduced since the previous outbreak.
Typically, 10 to 50 per cent of sows abort in a two to five-week period. Abortions occur across all parities, most in mid to late gestation. Sows go off feed and have fevers of 40 to 41 degrees C for two to four days before aborting.
Sow mortality can be high, ranging from five to 10 per cent of inventory over the two to five-week period. Boars also die, occasionally. Most, but not all, affected herds have been vaccinated against PRRS. PRRS field virus has been isolated from the great majority of cases investigated so far.
Affected sows usually seroconvert to PRRS, but also seroconvert to several other abortigenic agents, like Parvovirus, Lepto, and others. Preweaning mortality may go up dramatically in pigs that are born alive during the storm. Nursery pigs are not affected.
The cause of SAMS is being actively researched at several centres. Currently, the list of possible causes includes: a new viral agent; a new agent plus PRRS; a known agent plus PRRS; or a new strain of PRRS. One management practice being recommended by veterinarians to minimize the risk of an outbreak is isolation and quarantine of replacement breeding stock for a minimum of 60 days. There are no diagnostic tests for this syndrome so isolation will only reduce, not eliminate, the chances of introducing the disease. However, extending the isolation period gives extra time to observe the animals for disease and allows the animals extra time to stop shedding any agent they might introduce into the herd.
S. Ernest Sanford, DVM, is a swine specialist with Boehringer Ingelheim in Burlington.