LAIRD, Sask. – Jean Zadorozny was making doughnuts before most people
were awake on April 22.
She needed enough to feed a town hall full of her farming neighbours at
a meeting that night.
By 8 p.m., 147 of them had filled the wooden laminate stacking chairs
in Laird’s old, clapboard-sided town hall. They came to talk about pigs.
Municipal maps marked with potential hog barn locations graced the
spruce paneled walls, but most in the room seemed to know exactly where
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their farm was relative to potential barn sites.
Some at the meeting wanted more pigs in their community. Most did not.
Guenter Harder wants more pigs in the area so that he and ultimately a
son can look forward to a stable, long-term, local market for their
feed grain as well as economic growth in the area.
His daughter, Lorraine Harder, also wants to see local economic
development, but doesn’t feel commercial hog barns provide the kinds of
jobs that are right for the area. She also thinks large, industrial
farms may pose future risks to the local environment.
People didn’t begin restacking the chairs until after 11. The debate
was never heated, but it outlasted the expert speakers brought in from
around the province. It even outlasted the many boxes of Zadorozny’s
decoratively glazed doughnuts and the two, 20 litre urns of coffee.
Big Sky Pork, an established Saskatchewan commercial pig producer, is
examining potential locations within the Rural Municipality of Rosthern
for sites where new barn complexes can be built. These five-site
operations, that are often spread over rural municipalities, produce
tens of thousands of hogs annually, millions of litres of manure, and
potentially 40 to 50 jobs for each project once they are operating.
Despite different points of view at the meeting, most in attendance
said they would welcome jobs, the feed grain market, and even the pigs.
But the manure, the odour and the water demands of large hog operations
were not as appealing.
Local municipal councillors generally favour the project and have
provided a repayable research grant for water and soil studies to Big
Sky Pork to examine potential sites.
Florian Possberg, chief executive officer of Big Sky, said community
issues must be dealt with before the company will seriously consider
turning ground.
“We work with a local steering committee, they work with the RM and the
local residents. We can deal with the science of a barn. We can’t deal
with the local politics or opinion.”
RM councillor David Klassen said the opponents have met with the
council and have successfully demanded an “all ratepayers meeting …
at the end of May.”
Opponents to the Rosthern barns are asking their neighbours to reject
spreading manure from the barns on their fields.
The maps on the Laird Hall walls glowed with pink ink around three of
the potential sites. The land surrounding these barn sites has already
been committed to be free of manure from the barns in hopes it may
block the use of those locations.
Lorraine Harder said the local farming community “know all about having
livestock. They know about manure. They would like to have jobs for
youth. They also know that these are industrial complexes that don’t
have to follow industrial standards. There is no one forcing them to
comply to labour standards. This is not the kind of business they want
as a neighbour or anyplace their kids should work.
“If it was an unregulated steel plant, they wouldn’t want that either.”
She and her father stayed to put away chairs and debate the issue a
little further with their neighbours.
A community meeting is scheduled for May 30.
