Town example of hog potential
There isn’t much cheerful news in grain markets these days, so perhaps it would be good to hear what seems to be a good news story in the town of Leroy, Sask.
The community of about 450 was recently concerned about its future. The school was in jeopardy and businesses were in danger of closing.
Today, the school is renovated, there is a housing shortage, people are moving in from out of province and the local sports leagues have full rosters.
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How come?
As Doug Still, the mayor of nearby Humboldt, put it, Leroy was reborn because of hogs.
Humboldt itself is in pretty good shape thanks in part to swine barn development.
There is zero unemployment and recently an agreement was signed with a developer to build 77 reasonably priced houses in the community.
Still says there is community support for hog development in his region because it is seen as building on the natural strength of the area.
Why is it that some communities embrace new hog developments, while others fight them?
Speakers at a Prairie Swine Centre conference, beamed to several sites across North America by satellite, examined this question.
Ed Waddell, director of western operations for Elite Swine, said misinformed journalists, opposition politicians, radical vegetarians, animal rightists and “the person who needs a cause” are all a burden to the potential hog operation.
But he also admitted not every hog barn is a model of environmentalism and good neighborliness. One bad operation stands out far more than the dozens of clean, odor-free, well-run barns.
He believes most hog operations would get along better with their neighbors if they injected manure into the soil and had a large, well positioned storage pit to avoid year-round spreading.
It might be too expensive for an individual barn to have injection equipment, but if a few operations got together to contract out the work, a small industry would spring up to service them, he said.
Paul Lasley, a sociologist at Iowa State University, said studies of hog operations in the United States indicate that The Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” applies to swine as much as people.
Operations that respect their neighbors and support their community tend to be supported by the community.
“It’s not rocket science,” said Lasley.
