The hog industry has been in such poor shape most have forgotten the hog expansion moratorium in much of agricultural Manitoba.
The industry fought it like crazy, but the then NDP government under Premier Gary Doer, who actually wrote the bill imposing permanently the moratorium, laughed and scoffed at the industry’s concerns.
It is interesting how this researcher from the University of Manitoba now says the moratorium will limit hog producers’ ability to adopt environment technologies. If I recall correctly, part of the reasoning by government was the use of new technologies.
Sometimes I wonder where these people get their information because it isn’t quite as simple as this researcher puts it when it comes to the moratorium. There are many issues surrounding the moratorium including empty barns and lagoons producers idled during this horrible time. In my opinion, we haven’t seen the impact yet, but we will.
An article by Bruce Cochran of Farmscape.ca says research conducted by the University of Manitoba in 2006-2007 estimated the cost to the pork industry of moving from nitrogen-based to phosphorus-based livestock manure application limits at 18 to 25 percent of the net income of producing farms at that time.
In the fall of 2008, the province established permanent moratoriums on hog barn construction or expansion in southeastern Manitoba, the Red River Valley Special Management Area including the Capital Region and the Interlake.
Charles Grant, a senior agribusiness and agricultural economics instructor with the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences, says his study wasn’t on the moratorium, but manure management remains front and centre on the minds of producers.
“The one thing that might be kind of a place where there’s a little bit of a competing interest is if a farmer needs to grow to afford the capital investment to deal with the phosphorus issue,” said Grant. “It’s quite expensive to buy the treatment systems required if you’ve really run out of land and you can’t deal with it locally, then the moratorium could get in the way of them being able to expand to deal with the phosphorus issue so you have a little bit of a competing issues there.
He said the financial crisis has been front and foremost on the minds of the industry and the individuals for a couple of years.
“Now as we move back into the expansionary phase and there’s some black ink that the industry can earn, I think the moratorium issue will come back again,” he said.
Had the moratorium come into being during the time the industry was expanding, Grant feels the impact would have been much larger. Because the industry had been contracting it hasn’t had that big an impact but, as people start to position themselves for expansion, the issue is likely to resurface.
