Richard Wright, a former military man, shouldn’t have been surprised that occupying the middle ground during a war can be as uncomfortable as being stranded in no man’s land, where a crossfire rakes any person rash enough to stand.
Wright, head of hog barn promoter Quadra Management, along with Heartland Livestock official Neil Ketilson, tried to stake out a middle position for the hog industry at a hog forum held in Saskatoon Dec. 6.
The meeting was organized by a number of Saskatoon environmental and social groups. An organizer said there was no attempt to “stage manage” the forum, but it was clearly dominated by those opposed to corporate farms.
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But while the crowd listened politely to the two men whose companies operate joint venture hog barns with farmers, Wright and Ketilson were seen as part of the problem by the activists; enemies in an ideological war.
Not only did many say large-scale hog barns are incompatible with family farms, some suggested the very basis of prairie agriculture, world exports, be banned.
“I’m against exportation,” said Patrick Rasmussen, a Quebec environmentalist flown in for the meeting. “Morally, I think it is unjustifiable to continue exporting.”
John Lowndes, one of the people fighting a large hog barn development in Kelvington, Sask., said he didn’t believe large and small hog barns can
co-exist.
Rather than building the prairie economy by promoting large hog barns and exporting agricultural products, Lowndes suggested governments consider bringing large numbers of the world’s poor to the Prairies.
“Maybe we should just bring people in here,” he said.
Crisis for small producers
Nancy Thompson, from the Centre For Rural Affairs in Nebraska, told the forum that huge American corporations dominate the industry there. She said corporate domination
is leading to a crisis in family farming, in which the big barns are locking out the small
producers.
Wright and Ketilson explained how Quadra and Heartland operate. Both companies say they only embark on a project if they are approached by local farmers and the barns they build are jointly owned with the local people.
Wright said the Quadra system allows farmers to stay in the hog business, build an efficient barn system and keep some control while having the benefits of a large network of production.
A part-farmer, part company barn like his might be the necessary compromise “between losing the industry and becoming North Carolina,” he said.
A couple of critics acknowledged that Quadra and Heartland are different from the mega-corporations coming to dominate the U.S. industry.
University of Regina sociologist Bob Stirling called Quadra and Heartland “innovative and community friendly in some ways.”
But Ketilson and Wright’s compromise wasn’t discussed during the forum’s main sessions. Generally, any move away from the family farm model was condemned.
“This is the latest battle,” said National Farmers Union executive secretary Darrin Qualman. Industrialization wiped out family chicken farms, and “I see, down the road, us losing it in hog production.”
People criticized large hog barns for more than just their effect on the family farm. There were also complaints about the smell, the environmental problems created by manure lagoons and some said pigs in large barns do not have happy lives.
But generally, the attacks focused on the industry’s industrialization.
“We’re not against agriculture,” said Rasmussen. “We’re against the industrialization of agriculture.”
Halfway through the day, Prairie Swine Centre director John Patience begged the critics of hog barn expansion to offer realistic alternatives so that a Saskatchewan hog industry can survive.
“Everyone is worried (about the industry),” he said. “We need options that are going to be viable.”
He challenged people dedicated to blocking hog barn projects to come up with new solutions.
Late in the meeting, Wright quietly pondered the purpose of his presence.
“I almost think (meetings like this) just inflame people,” he said.
At the end of the meeting, opponents of hog barn developments from various parts of Saskatchewan met to form a network of opposition.
