Life has a way of taking unexpected turns and for Ed Schultz, that unpredictability made for a colourful career in the pork business.
After 35 years and retirement looming, the quiet farm boy from Saskatchewan looks back on market upheavals, lengthy trade battles, whiffs of corruption and a parade of strong-minded farmers who crossed his path since he started managing Alberta Pork in 1974.
Life was never ordinary.
“I was the largest baby born in the nursing home of Spalding, Sask. Some people say ‘you were the only baby born there,’ ” he said.
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He decided to leave the farm one wintry day after spending many cold hours trying to fix a combine.
“I was laying on my back in the stubble working with my bare hands on the cold steel and that is when I decided not to farm.”
He earned an agriculture degree from the University of Saskatchewan and joined the early wave of young men seeking their fortune in Alberta.
His first job was with Canada Packers Shur-Gain feed division in 1964.
“There was good value-added even in those days because the feedlot industry was starting to expand and the hog industry wasn’t very large yet,” he said.
The company had 90 feed mills across the province and the business was farm oriented with 18 sales staff in Alberta.
In 1972, he heard about an ambitious plan to export pork to Japan. Intrigued, he approached the manager of the Alberta hog producers’ marketing board and offered his services on the export team. There was no job in that area but the Alberta Hog Journal was being launched and he was asked if he could write.
“I said, sure I could write. I lied,” he said.
He planned to stay with Alberta Pork for two years because he wanted to pursue a master’s degree. He became general manager in 1974 even though he was still considering a move to Australia for more schooling.
“I never did get to Australia until January last year.”
He would make many trips to Japan and other nations to sell Canadian pork.
The export breakthrough came about because of the weather.
“There was actually a protein crisis in 1973 which was worldwide,” he said.
El Nino’s warm waters had killed anchovies off the coast of Peru. There was a soybean crop failure in the United States and the Japanese were in the process of changing from a vegetable based diet to include more protein from meat.
“We came just at the right point that we were able to get some serious contracts,” he said.
He eventually travelled around the world promoting pork including a visit to Yugoslavia before the breakup of the country. Canada met the specifications but in the end, Yugoslavia turned to another eastern European country.
The packing scene was different 30 years ago when every city had a facility with numerous companies involved. At the time the packers included Gainers Ltd., Swift Canadian, Canada Packers, Burns Meats, Intercontinental Packers, Grande Prairie Packers and Capital Packers.
Alberta Pork ran the single desk marketing agency and it soon learned the packing situation was not perfect. A price fixing deal among the packers had been going on from 1965-78 through daily telephone conversations. Canada Packers, Intercontinental, Burns, Gainers and Swifts were involved.
The latter three pled guilty while Canada Packers and Intercontinental went to court where they were charged with limiting the prices to be paid on hogs offered to them by the Alberta Pork Producers Marketing Board. The companies were each fined $125,000 by the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench.
A class action suit resulted in the packers paying six cents a hog to producers who had sold pigs during the period that Alberta Pork administered. The Alberta board decided in 1981 to buy Fletcher’s Fine Foods as a result of this.
“We tried to overcome the conspiracy by becoming an active buyer ourselves,” he said.
The company was purchased with a loan and producers contributed an extra levy of $2 per hog to buy the Red Deer based processor.
“My recollection was the price was only $15 million for (the) whole company.”
It was an unusual move for producers. Eventually, shares were distributed among producers and most were sold off by 1999. Some regret the sale today.
“There really wasn’t much vision among producers concerning the marketing structure. They have more vision now when they see the concentration that exists with Maple Leaf and Olymel,” Schultz said.
He believes a producer group can still effectively manage a packing plant as well as the corporations.
While these upheavals occurred, hog farming was changing from smaller farrow-to-finish operations to large multi-site operations.
“You can’t put a date on when everything started to change,” he said.
When he joined the board there were as many as 26,000 farmers registered in Alberta to sell hogs. They needed a registration number to sell and some only marketed a couple of hogs per year.
“We had guys on the file who sold one pig,” he said.
Today there are about 1,000 members of Alberta Pork producing 3.5 million market hogs.
He also watched the board evolve from a single desk marketer to a commission style organization handling promotions, research and market development.
The single desk was phased out in the late 1990s but it was also tumultuous.
The province was hoping for the removal of the single desk and possibly the end of the association. A producer vote was held on a new plan for the board.
“If we hadn’t succeeded in getting producers to support the new marketing plan, we no longer existed. That was the ultimatum the Alberta government put on us and a lot of people were betting that we would disappear,” he said.
Once the open market system was installed, a second plebiscite was scheduled two years hence. The second plebiscite did not receive enough votes so the open market continued through the Western Hog Exchange.
The pork producers separated from the exchange in 2001 and it operates as an independent not-for-profit company.
Another outside force for change came with the name for the association. Known as the Alberta Pork Producers Marketing Board, it faced questions when testifying at a countervail hearing in the United States. Schultz said the Americans did not understand a marketing board’s role so the association changed its name to the Alberta Pork Producers Development Corp. It is now known as Alberta Pork.
Another change occurred in 1986 with a campaign to place hogs under a supply management system.
During a national meeting, the issue came to a head with the Quebec delegates laying down that province’s position.
“They said ‘we are ready for supply management when you are.’ The rest of the guys said ‘go to hell,’ ” he said.
The Quebec pork industry had been subsidizing its production from 1973-83 and went from 1.5 million to 5.5 million slaughter hogs. That growth was based on a support program based on assured returns to producers. He felt Quebec pumped up its agricultural production to gain a larger share, which he did not consider fair.
While the hog cycle now comes with the upheavals of booms and busts, Schultz still prefers open marketing.
Under supply management, Canada would be marketing fewer hogs domestically with a limited export market.
As he prepares for retirement, Schultz sees ways for the industry to improve. There is a productivity problem and lack of competitiveness compared to the U.S.
The industry was protected by the 65 cent dollar but now changes are needed.
“We were able to relax behind a low dollar and now we are caught.”
Despite the pressures he has no regrets.
Alberta may not have been the biggest pork group but it always managed to stay in the spotlight.
“We were always in trouble. Trouble with our government, trouble with the meat packers and trouble with others. We have had a fairly colourful history agitating for change.
“It was an education in itself in the things I got involved in. I had a good life,” he said.
He hopes the good life continues.
He was recently named one of the province’s 50 most influential people by Alberta Venture magazine.
His wife Judy is a food features writer with the Edmonton Journal and together they raised two sons. One lives near Edmonton while the other is in New Zealand where they plan to live part of each year.
