HARTNEY, Man. – Allan Manshreck fears government controls being placed on Manitoba cattle producers could strangle the industry.
The cattle feeder from Deloraine, Man., suggested last week that the noose is tightening as the province strengthens its regulations for things like manure management, while at the same time rural municipalities pass bylaws that practically prohibit the growth of intensive livestock developments.
A further concern among producers is environmental farm plans and the burden these might place on the cattle industry, especially if they become mandatory in Manitoba.
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One of Manshreck’s biggest complaints is with the approval process for the expansion of existing intensive livestock operations or the construction of new ones.
Generally, the province is supposed to look after environmental reviews of these proposed developments, while rural municipalities address land use planning and zoning issues.
Manshreck said the clout wielded by municipalities under the current system allows them to pass bylaws that essentially prohibit further intensive livestock development.
It appears the province lacks the power needed to intervene, he said, even if there is no science-based arguments to support such municipal bylaw restraints.
“It makes it really difficult for anyone to expand,” he said, noting that among those affected are parents needing to expand if they have children wanting to farm.
“I’m not expanding my feedlot and I don’t think there’s a feedlot guy in the province who would want to.”
Not all rural municipalities in Manitoba have such prohibitive restrictions, but the number of those that do has increased in the past few years, largely in opposition to large hog barns.
That development be-gan in earnest a few years ago after Maple Leaf Foods decided to build a $120 million hog slaughter plant in Brandon.
The province’s manure management regulations have also become more restrictive in the past five years as Gary Doer’s NDP government strives for a balance between economic development and protection of the environment.
Manshreck thinks the balance is shifting too far in one direction, and wonders how many more restrictions and regulations will be added in the years to come.
“It could get a hell of a lot worse.”
At a district meeting of the Manitoba Cattle Producers Association in Hartney last week, Manshreck accused the provincial government of talking out of both sides of its mouth.
While it publicly declares that it wants to see more livestock development in the province, its actions seem to suggest the opposite, he said.
To attract a large packer, the province needs more feedlots, but in his opinion, feedlots are among those most at risk of strangulation by the lengthening strands of bureaucratic red tape.
“Who in their right mind is going to invest in a feedlot in the province when the government can change the rules three years from now?”
Producers at the district meeting also cited concerns about what they consider a concerted effort to elect people opposed to intensive livestock developments to rural municipal councils.
They believe a central lobby group opposed to intensive livestock developments goes to rural areas to orchestrate opposition.
The challenges are compounded by the number of city residents moving to rural areas, said Shirley Conibear, a district director and treasurer for the MCPA.
That trend can include people poorly acquainted with normal farming practices.
“Our rural councils are being taken over by urbanites,” said Conibear, a producer from Baldur, Man.
Producers need to counter that trend by becoming more political and getting elected to their local councils, said Scott Hunt, MCPA’s district director in the Hartney area.
He also reminded those at last week’s district meeting that one of the five pillars under the agricultural policy framework is the environment. Hunt cautioned that some aspects of the APF could be neutral to farmers’ bottom lines, while others could cost them money.
“The cost of production could go higher at a time when we least need it.”
Also noted was the decision by the federal government to bolster the presence of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans staff on the Prairies in recent years.
That has brought more strength to an agency capable of restricting what farms and municipalities can do around waterways, even if years have passed since those waterways were a source of fish habitat.
