Sugar beet may be returning to Ontario after an absence of nearly 30 years.The Michigan Sugar Company (MSC), which contracts, refines and markets approximately 70 per cent of all the sugar beets grown in Michigan, is investigating the possibility of contracting sugar beet acreage in Lambton and Kent counties. If the "Ontario Project" is successful, sugar beet acreage could be under cultivation in 1996, for gross returns of $980 an acre, according to company officials.
At grower meetings mid-February, Keith Kalso of MSC showed that at current averages of 18 tons per acre, growers could expect a net income from beets of $386.67 an acre, before land charges. Better-than-average yields of 22 "short" tons per acre would net $535.93 per acre. Company representatives emphasized that yields have been low for the past two years.
Based on current contract prices, not current market prices, MSC estimated local cash crop farmers' gross returns for corn in 1996 to be $611 per acre; beans, $516 per acre; and wheat, $400 per acre. Gross profits for beets were conservatively projected at $986 per acre. Although farmers surveyed say beets look less attractive compared with currently high commodity prices, they also say beets make sense as an alternative for cash crops in the long term.
The 90-year-old Michigan company, which markets refined sugar under the Pioneer and Great Lakes labels in the U.S., has invested US$30 million in the past five years to increase the capacity of its Michigan and Ohio refineries, says representative Robert Braem. From 1985 to 1995, the company expanded its acreage from 80,000 to 120,000; the number of growers increased from 1,200 to 1,400. "We've reached our saturation point and tightened rotations to an extent we shouldn't have," says Braem.
Contract growers in Kent and Lambton counties would deliver beets to MSC's Croswell plant near the Sarnia-Port Lambton Bluewater Bridge.
Response to the proposal "overwhelmed" the company's five representatives at the mid-February information meeting near Petrolia and Chatham. Over 300 farmers jammed the Countryview Golf Course's banquet hall at Oungah and overflowed into an anteroom and hallway. About 60 people crammed into a meeting space at the Enniskillen Township Hall a week earlier. Other farmers have been phoning the company and making weekend trips across the border to see the Croswell refinery.
The Ontario agriculture ministry's Ed Tomecek estimates that about 90 per cent of the Kent county gathering were cash crop farmers and about 10 per cent vegetable producers.
Sugar beets had been grown in much of southwestern Ontario between 1902 and 1967. Tate and Lyle closed the last remaining refinery in Ontario at Chatham in February, 1968.
"We have some hurdles but we can get past them," said Braem during his presentation. Issues include herbicide residue, transportation, harvesting and some "new ground".
Because shipping soil across the border isn't allowed, it's being proposed that the earth be stripped off the beets at the refinery and then shipped back across the border. "Soil has been banned coming from the U.S., but this our own soil, so it presents a whole new question of whether we can accept it back or not," Tomecek says. "It's a potential impediment, but it is solvable."
Kent and Lambton soil types and pH are favourable and there is an abundance of experienced growers. Large capital investments in harvesting equipment might not be necessary if leasing schemes proposed by equipment dealers work out.
But up to 80 per cent of interested growers would not be able to grow the beets this coming season because of herbicide residues. Land sprayed with Pursuit would need three to four years before beets could be grown on it and atrazine-sprayed ground would require one to two years.
Braem said that he has no idea how many acres would be contracted in the inaugural year, but suggested 500 to 1,000. Despite all the "hurdles", Tomecek says he's confident there are enough willing and able farmers to form a nucleus of 20 to 30 growers who could get the projects off the ground in 1996. "It's anybody's guess to say where [this project] will go," says Tomecek. "It would be unfair to say it will go and unfair to say it won't go."
Flat parlour keeps costs on the level
By DON STONEMAN
The spectre of an open border hangs over the dairy industry like June storm clouds over a hay field. But aggressive young dairyman Dan Verhoeven, Thamesford, feels he has a fighting chance, even if border controls come tumbling down far ahead of schedule.Last year, Verhoeven converted his old tiestall bank barn to fit Ontario's first flat barn milking parlour, giving him major labour savings two years before he would have been able to afford a full blown traditional parlour, and while milk prices are still stable. Verhoeven acquired the double-four flat barn parlour from a local dealer on a 66-month lease, with an option to buy it at 60 months. "It's like a loan through the company," Verhoeven says. "It's another form of credit I could get at the time."
The parlour is bolted into the old bank barn, not planted in concrete, so it can be removed at any time.
With a manageable loan from the Farm Credit Corporation he converted the heifer loafing barn into a 62-space freestall complete with manure storage at a cost of between $2,100 and $2,200 a stall and bought 3,300 litres of quota. "I wanted to get up and going," he says. "I don't know how long we have under the current system."
The low-cost expansion was the best Verhoeven could manage, after his father died 18 months ago, bringing a planned expansion of a more conventional kind to a crashing halt.
The young Verhoeven had bought the farm in 1987 and moved the herd over later when his father became ill. A 45 X 75-foot bank barn with tie stalls housed cows. A 53 X 85-foot lean-to on the south side served as a loafing barn for heifers and dry cows and housed the TMR feeder.
But it was far from being an efficient way to milk cows. His stable cleaner was worn out, and tie stalls were too short for the cows. When Verhoeven's father died, the family's long-time lender was reluctant to finance an expansion before the young Verhoeven had more experience.
Verhoeven went banker hunting, finding a new lender in the Farm Credit Corporation. He says the FCC was more willing to deal with people, rather than concentrating on debt-to-equity ratios, but his new lender also wanted him to get some time under his belt.
It made him take a harder look at his resources.
"I wanted the cheapest way to milk cows in an automated way." That's where the flat barn parlour came in. In January, 1995, a sales representative from Tri-County Dairy Supplies, St. Marys, had dropped off some information on the Universal flat barn parlour for him. Verhoeven dug it out, and went to see about getting a deal.
Verhoeven already liked the idea of the cost, but seeing a similar system milking cows in Quebec clinched the deal. "I was pretty much sold by the way the cows went through and the ease of milking.
"It's the advantage of cows walking straight through. That's where it saves time and hassle."
Verhoeven's cows, including a few small Jerseys, small walk out of a holding area into the parlour, stepping up without fuss to a 14-inch-high platform to be milked. When milking is done, the operator pulls a manual switch to open the headgate and allow the cow to head into an exit alley. "The parlour worked every bit as well as I hoped it would," Verhoeven says, as he sits on a stool preparing a cow for milking.
Every cow "is milked as an individual" Verhoeven says. Unlike in a traditional parlour system, each stall runs independently, so a slow milker doesn't slow down through-put from the other stalls. Without a crowd gate, he can milk 45 cows in 50 to 55 minutes if there are no new heifers to be broken into the milking system. With his wife Jackie pushing behind the cows to move them into the parlour, he can finish milking faster. "It's pretty relaxing. You get to sit down a lot of the time."
One of the benefits is that the operator gets a good look at cows as they walk past. Access and view are as good as in a tiestall. "I can do more management this way." In a parlour, the operator tends to see "just udders and legs."
The only short-coming is that there's little protection from being kicked by a cow.
Cows were trained to use the system in four days, he says. "The first milking was crazy. They didn't know they had to go forward" to get out of the milking stall.
New heifers "are less problem than you would expect. They have no habits to break.
"There's so little problem it's really surprising."
He figures he would need a double-six herring bone parlour to match the throughput on the flat barn. "I would have had to spend more in the barn to prepare it for the parlour." Prior to installing the parlour, he took the floor out for the full length of the barn and dug it out between 18 and 24 inches deep to give more room for air space. There's a six-inch drop in the floor from the front of the parlour to the back of the holding area so that it can be washed out. He and his brother built the stabling.
Wash water runs into the manure storage, which is under the slats in the freestall barn.
The existing three- inch pipeline and the milk receiver were salvaged, saving about $3,000 on the installation cost. The lean-to had been a loafing area for the heifers and dry cows. A feed bunk down the middle and "a lot of wasted space" has been replaced by a side feed alley and three rows of freestalls and slats, with a gutter under the slats. The barn is fully insulated. Heifers are raised elsewhere on a custom basis.
Verhoeven now milks 44 to 45 cows of his own, as well as some that he milks for other farmers. Verhoeven plans to run a 60-cow operation by himself. "Whether this will happen is another matter." Currently, his wife Jackie feeds the calves. She and Dan's brother take over milking when Dan is busy cropping 150 acres.
Haylage is stored in a poured concrete tower silo, while high moisture corn goes into a steel, sealed silo.
An automated feeder is ready to be installed. It and a crowd gate will save an hour in chore time daily.
While it was the low cost that attracted Verhoeven to this flat parlour system he sees it as a long-term substitute for a full parlour. "The idea really appeals to me. I'd milk 80 cows with this.
"For the cost and ease of milking it is pretty hard to beat. It needs to be looked at."
A new parlour, installed, would cost around $10,000 per stall. He figures this system would cost a farmer between $3,000 to $5,000, depending on options that can be added.
But this method is different from true flat barn milking, where a farmer houses cows in a free stall, and then brings groups into a row of tie stalls with automatic milkers between them. Cows are milked and then another group is brought in. In Verhoeven's operation, wash water is drained into an underground tank under the floor of the return alley. A simple sump pump generates the pressure to push the water through a hose and wets down the parlour for cleaning. It drains into the manure pit.
He picks up manure after the night milking in a wheel barrow, then washes down the holding area. He aims just to keep manure from collecting.
Building the slats gave him the chance to store manure for longer periods of time. "It takes the stress away more than anything." There's plenty of stress in dairying already without worrying about manure disposal, he says.
The NAFTA trade panel decision in June "will tell us to buy quota or not. If this NAFTA thing falls through, we are going to learn what efficiency is in a hell of a hurry," he says.
Still, he sees a future for small operators. Established farmers in tie stall operations that are paid for will be competitive with large operations producing lower priced milk, he thinks.
For now, his first goal is to get production up and get the protein and fat ratio in line.
His other goal is to be at 10,000 litres per cow before long. Production per cow is now between 8,000 and 8,200 litres. There's no more time required to milk an extra 10 litres per cow per day. And he has the facilities he needs now with adequate air quality and cow comfort.
"I never dread milking, no matter what."
But his production didn't take the boost he was expecting last fall when he moved cows into the freestall. Early December, he began working with dairy consultants Rob Bell and Ian Shivas, St. Marys. Litres per cow have increased already to 27 from 22. And he is hoping for a 32-litre average by June, as long as calving interval and days in milk stay in order.
Currently, fat is 4.1 per cent and protein is 3.5. Cows have been eating only haylage, high-moisture corn and a supplement. He's looking forward to feeding his own corn silage "because of all the good things you hear about it." A few weeks ago, he began buying corn silage from a feedlotting neighbour. He brings it to his farm a pickup truck at a time and hand loads it into his front loading TMR mixer. If it works, he will put up a used stave silo to store corn silage.
A couple of years ago, he milked three times a week for six weeks at the end of the dairy year to fill his quota. But he found the schedule was exhausting, and he won't do that again until he sees a 35-litre-per-cow average.
And he is being encouraged by Shivas and Bell to feed 2.5 kg of barley per cow per day to replace corn, because the fast digesting barley is a good match for the highly soluble protein in the alfalfa. Barley is expensive this year. But he is still looking at it. "I don't mind working if it is going to show up" in increased profits, Verhoeven says. "I'll try anything if it makes more milk."
U.S. losers in NAFTA: rancher
North Dakota rancher Mark Sip wonders what the point was in the United States taking part in a North America Free Trade Agreement.Last year, Mexico shipped a record 1.7 million head of feeder and fed cattle north into the U.S. with the roadway greased by a devalued peso. And Canada continues to send 700,000 head south into the U.S., along with a steady stream of trucks loaded with boxed meat.
Stuck in the middle are ranchers like Sip.
"I don't think free trade is a bad concept," the rancher says. "I think the problems with NAFTA are a result of governments we negotiated the agreement with not being completely honest."
That kind of thinking among American beef producers has nearly always been present to some degree during the last few years. But this year in particular, it sends shivers down the backs of Canadian producers as the political rhetoric heats up.
"Preparing for a presidential election is pretty scary for America's trading partners like Canada," says Dave Andrews, a Brooks, Alberta, rancher and chairman of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association (CCA) foreign trade committee. Republican presidential nominee hopeful Pat Buchanan has found a visceral soft spot in the U.S. by decrying trade agreements made by the current government and promising to protect domestic jobs.
The last thing Canadian cattlemen want is American scrutiny of Canadian trade practices. Last year, Canada negotiated an agreement with the U.S. on durum wheat exports. Just weeks ago, a softwood lumber deal was signed.
Both issues gained international prominence after complaints came from producer groups.
Andrews says in the last few weeks the CCA has had inquiries from both the American embassy in Ottawa and the national beef producer group in Colorado about safety net programs being developed across Canada, Andrews says. "That is always a red flag for us when they ask for information on our programs."