SASKATOON – The Saskatchewan government is threatening the family farm with its support of large-scale hog barns, says one of the New Democratic Party’s traditional allies.
“Every time you introduce into one sector large scale intensive operations, what you do is sideswipe a lot of smaller operations,” said Nettie Wiebe, National Farmers Union president.
The provincial government’s support for large-scale hog barns provoked a debate at the NFU’s annual meeting for Saskatchewan members.
In a press release issued after the meeting the NFU criticized “the NDP government’s involvement in promoting these and other mega hog barns in the province (with) financial support, a Pork Implementation Team, and changing the Agricultural Operations Act to make it compatible with large corporate farms.”
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This left hook hasn’t knocked Saskatchewan agriculture minister Eric Upshall off his feet.
“There’s nothing wrong with constructive criticism,” he said in an interview. “It keeps a government on its toes and makes sure we don’t get stale in our thinking.”
Remains firm on views
But Upshall does not sound as if he is about to weaken the province’s support for large-scale hog barns.
“Smaller operations are going out,” he said. “It has nothing to do with the government.”
Wiebe said in addition to destroying smaller family farms, large scale hog barns also kill attempts at farm diversification.
She said many grain farmers have added hogs to their farms so they’re not so reliant on grain alone. When major hog barns come on line, the small diversified producer can’t survive.
But Upshall said small hog operations were falling in large numbers well before any of the recent wave of large barns were built. He said 1,800 small hog producers dropped out of the industry in the past five years, all of them small producers.
He said the large barns are actually filling the void left by small producers that drop out of the industry.
