FAIRVIEW, Alta. – Northern Alberta farmers, investors and local government officials are looking to a Saskatchewan company to help bring economic development to their area.
Big Sky Farms of Humboldt, Sask., has been asked to manage a 17-barn hog facility and feed mill in Clear Hills County in Alberta’s Peace River region.
Daryl Possberg, a director with Big Sky Farms, said while there is still much work to be done with site location and investor financing, his company likes the proposed project and its location.
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“We thought it was a natural fit,” he said.
The combination of a large land base, small population, abundance of feed grain and distance required to take that feed grain to market make it an ideal location for a hog operation.
The $40 million Northern Swine Systems hog loop would have one 6,000 hog sow barn, four nursery barns, 12 feeder barns and a central feed mill. The barns would produce more than 150,000 hogs a year and would require 42 full-time and 15 part-time staff and feed grain from 30,000 acres.
Clear Hills County councillor Marlene Maxwell said the council has been trying to attract an intensive livestock operation for the past 10 years, either as a feedlot or a hog barn, to help the area use its feed grain and diversify. The region’s main industries are agriculture, logging and oil and gas.
“We’ve always been interested in someone coming up here,” said Maxwell, who toured Big Sky’s operation in Humboldt.
The county, which borders British Columbia, features 667,000 acres of arable farmland and only 2,770 people.
“We want to try to keep young people here,” said Maxwell.
County reeve Mae Allen said a hog operation would be a benefit to area farmers who have few options for their feed grain.
“It’s definitely a diversification for farmers.”
Gerald Raspberry, a farmer from Worsley, Alta., agreed:
“The reason I’m interested is we need development up here,” he said.
“I really feel strongly we need these types of things in the North.”
Raspberry’s farm may be a location for one of the feeder barns, depending on water and soil tests.
While other communities have not embraced many hog barns, Raspberry thinks better public relations and a greater concern for the neighbours may have eased the tension in his community. He has already talked to his nearest neighbour, 800 metres north of the proposed barn site, and has had no objections.
“We have to be concerned about our neighbours.”
Grant Mann, president of the Peace Pork Management Group that is managing the project, said his organization has had a good response from area farmers who see the barns as a buyer for their grain and the manure as a less expensive form of fertilizer.
“There is a real interest from the farmers well beyond what we expected,” said Mann, whose group has brought the players together to build and manage the barns.
One of Mann’s biggest challenges has been finding the $40 million to build the barns. Half of it will come in the form of a mortgage from Farm Credit Canada, $10 million is from an AFSC debenture program to help support agriculture development in rural Alberta and the other $10 million must come from investors.
“It’s not easy to find $10 million when oil and gas is paying huge rates of returns,” Mann said. “It’s certainly not as attractive as oil and gas.”
Despite the difficulties in attracting financing, Mann doesn’t think they are insurmountable obstacles.
The first stage of the barn application is before the Natural Resources Conservation Board, the agency in charge of intensive livestock operation approvals. Once the first stage is approved, engineering work must be done to ensure water and soil conditions are suitable for the barns. That information will be used for the second phase of NRCB approvals.
