NEERLANDIA, Alta. – Frustrated by falling commodity prices, one Alberta farmer is taking his piggies directly to market.
Dick Barendregt began selling privately to customers in Edmonton last March after he forecast a disastrous plunge in pork prices.
“We also foresaw that the big corporations are going to take over from the little farms if we don’t fight back,” said Barendregt, who produces 1,000 pigs annually on his farm, about 130 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.
“The big operations have become integrated with slaughter facilities. A slaughter facility would like to deal with one place with 40,000 hogs and one management system than 20 places with 2,000 hogs.”
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After arranging for a local abattoir to butcher his hogs and regulators to inspect the meat, Barendregt set up tables at three farmers’ markets in Edmonton under the label Freeman Farm Country Style Pork.
His wife, Joanna, and nine children help with the business.
In addition to hawking pork chops, bacon and ham at his farmer’s market booths every Saturday, Bar-endregt began running advertising spots on an Edmonton radio station that broadcasts across Alberta. He also set up a toll-free line for customers to call in orders.
From the start, Freeman broke even, selling about 12 hogs each week at $300 apiece. But business boomed in December and the company has struggled to keep up with demand.
Barendregt links the success to customers who want to buy directly from farmers, as well as his lower prices.
“The consumers in and around Edmonton, they are certainly aware we are the little guy and they want to support us,” said Barendregt, a second-generation farmer who said he was losing $6,000 every month before starting Freeman.
Attracted by prices up to 30 percent cheaper than supermarkets, Horst Merz first bought pork chops from the Barendregts last fall.
“I did try some of his products and I was most satisfied. It was excellent meat, that was the main reason. The price also had a bearing on it right from the start,” said Merz, who lives near Ardrossan, an Edmonton suburb.
“And it is very important to me that the man is an independent farmer, he has a large family and everybody works. That is definitely an incentive for me to buy from him.”
Pauline Bittman also likes the idea of dealing directly with the farmer: “I have five boys, so I need bigger roasts and batches of bacon.”
Barendregt believes other farmers could sell their hogs directly to customers.
“There’s enough for all of us. We don’t have to go through the big corporations, we can do it for ourselves,” said Barendregt, who has farmed for 15 years and never taken a marketing course.
Freeman’s success has attracted the attention of Fletcher’s Fine Foods, a major pork processor based in Red Deer, Alta.
“I wished him all the best in his endeavor,” said Fletcher’s vice-president Greg Whalley. “We think these are niche market opportunities that will always exist. We don’t view them as a direct competitor in any sense.”
Fletcher’s buys most of its hogs from the Alberta Pork Producers Development Corporation, the marketing arm for the province’s hog farmers, and a group Barendregt has no use for.
He said the corporation only cares about large industry players.
“As farmers, we have been taken to the cleaners.”
Barendregt’s rebuke puzzles Ed Schultz, the corporation’s general manager.
“He hasn’t asked for any help,” Schultz said. “That’s interesting. I can’t understand that comment because the family farm is the basis for our operations. We don’t offer any specific help to large farms. That’s not true at all. If you look at our board of directors, all nine are family farmers.
“We’ve encouraged him in what he’s doing, but it is not something that every farmer can do, go out and sell his pigs privately.”
Promote product
The corporation has worked to promote pork beyond the supermarket, Schultz said. He said to help boost pork’s health image, the corporation has hired a registered dietician.
“We’ve literally bred fat off the pig,” he said.
But Barendregt is convinced he can do better alone and he has managed to persuade Sweis Ubels, a hog farmer from Lacombe, Alta., to sell under the Freeman label in central Alberta.
“Selling wholesale is just not going to make you a lot of money,” said Ubels, who immigrated to Canada from the Netherlands in 1989.
“You are not going to make a living that way. Selling privately, the margins are bigger. It is a lot more work, but you can make a living at it.”
Ubels also started selling privately last spring, but decided to join Barendregt and pool resources.
“By helping each other out and using each other’s knowledge, it just goes a little easier, I guess. It is tough enough trying to run a family farm,” he said.
Ubels, who produces about 600 hogs every year, said marketing pork directly will save his farm and lifestyle.
“The reason we are doing this is to make a go of our family farms. We both want to have a family. We don’t want to become hog brokers. We just want to run our family farms.”
