BRANDON, Man. – He probably won’t ever feed them or haul them to market, but hogs are becoming an important part of Jim Hargreaves’ dairy and grain operation.
In the past year, farmers like him in western Manitoba have been mulling over ways to get more large hog barns on their side of the province.
And now, they’re starting to band together with other investors from their communities to get the barns built.
While farmers may sit on boards of directors for these projects, most will not be involved in the barns’ day-to-day operations. They are working with companies that have experience in the business.
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The companies run most aspects of the barns for a fee. They often take an equity position in the project too.
Hargreaves has invested in two new projects in western Manitoba: a 600-sow farrow to finish operation near Treherne and a 1,280-sow multiplier barn near Souris.
He said he has enough work at home to keep him busy and admits he’s “as green as grass” when it comes to raising pigs.
Without transportation subsidies, Manitoba farmers are also looking for local markets for feed grains.
Grain prices have been good for the past few years, but Hargreaves was looking for a way to protect himself from future low prices, something government programs like the Gross Revenue Insurance Plan used to do.
He’s using income he has deferred over the past few years. He said investing in barns is not much different than buying an RRSP. He calls it a tax writeoff now with potential to generate income in a couple of years.
Hargreaves also said he feels good about the decent paying jobs he’s helping create.
Large hog barns run by management companies are common in the eastern part of the province, where they’re close to feed mills and Winnipeg processors.
But the western half of Manitoba is just starting to get into the business.
“We thought some of this change might come about last year, but then grain prices kind of got up so it didn’t sort of trigger the reaction that we thought it would,” said Brian Cotton, a swine specialist with Manitoba Agriculture.
But now, the gun has gone off and the race is on.
Farmers and other potential investors lined the walls at a recent investment seminar in Brandon, listening carefully to production companies’ pitches and asking hard-nosed questions about the way they work and their plans for the area.
So far, there’s only a handful of large barns in western Manitoba but Cotton sees at least 10 or 15 more going up this year, most working with production companies. A consultant, who helps farmers and investors set up projects, said there’s enough money in the area to support the projects.
“It’s whether you can get the people who have it, if you can trigger them to invest in the barns,” said Terry Betker of Canstar Project Development Group Ltd.
His consulting firm helped a 1,600 farrow-to-early-weanling barn get off the ground near Souris this year. Betker said he’s working with four other large-scale projects in various stages, with some construction starting this summer.
