LETHBRIDGE – As Jack Moerman’s time as chair of Alberta Pork winds down, he remains a strong supporter of industry expansion in the province.
Alberta has 15 percent of Canadian production with 3.5 million slaughter hogs, far behind Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba.
“We have potential to do more than that,” said Moerman at a regional pork producers’ meeting in Lethbridge Nov. 18.
Manitoba is likely to raise 8.5 million pigs this year, or 79 hogs per sq. kilometre of arable land. Alberta has less than 20 per km.
A worrisome situation, said Moerman, is the shrinking number of Alberta hog producers in the last decade.
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Last year, 260 hog producers called it quits and in 2003, 240 left the business. There were 4,000 registered producers in 1996 and 26,000 in 1971 when the Alberta pork organization began.
“We see our producer numbers go down almost year upon year. It is happening not because we want to but because of necessity,” Moerman said.
In the last four years the industry has grown four percent in Alberta, 27 percent in Saskatchewan and more than 60 percent in Manitoba. Pork production has been steady in Alberta since 2002, but fewer people are doing more work on larger farms.
Moerman said the Alberta pork industry could be 10 percent larger. There is an ample, fusarium-free feed supply, large land base and proximity to markets.
He placed some of the blame on regulatory problems in the province after the government created the Agricultural Operations Practices Act and put the Natural Resources Conservation Board in charge of regulating the intensive livestock industry.
Moerman said the system created uncertainty, and preparing proposals costs producers thousands of dollars for engineers, lawyers and farm upgrades.
He said he hopes recent recommendations from a consultant will streamline what has been a controversial authority. Some of the proposals to change the way projects are approved or appealed have been implemented.
“We also believe there needs to be some legislative changes within the act and we hope that can go quickly,” he said, perhaps in the spring session of the legislature.
Another factor hindering hog sector growth in Alberta is a labour shortage, especially on large operations. The problem is unique to Alberta because of the high wages offered by the oil and gas industry. The solution may be to attract foreign workers.
“If Canadians can’t fill the position, we have to start looking at the whole immigrant possibility,” Moerman said.
Alberta Pork may become a facilitator for producers who want help with the immigrant labour program.
“We don’t want to displace able bodied Canadians, but if we don’t have Canadians who want to work in our industry or work for the kind of pay scale we are able to pay, then we have to look abroad.”
