After four years of fighting, Roger Desilets’ uphill battle to keep a proposed hog barn out of his neighbourhood is beginning to look steeper than ever.
Desilets, a beekeeper from Oakburn, Man., is one of several rural residents opposed to a $4.5 million, 2,500-sow farrowing operation that recently received municipal approval from the RM of Strathclair, south of Riding Mountain National Park.
He and others in the area had hoped to have a portion of Strathclair and neighbouring municipalities declared off-limits to liquid hog manure systems, a plan that would likely keep modern hog barns out of the area.
Read Also
Farming Smarter receives financial boost from Alberta government for potato research
Farming Smarter near Lethbridge got a boost to its research equipment, thanks to the Alberta government’s increase in funding for research associations.
To organize against hog barns, they formed the Wolf Creek Conservation Group, dedicated to protecting lakes and rivers in an area that covers roughly 2,000 sq. kilometres.
Initially, it looked like Desilets and his colleagues were making headway.
In 2001, an initial application by Premium Pork to have the barn constructed in the RM of Strathclair resulted in a three to three vote and it appeared the Premium Pork proposal was losing steam.
In addition, some neighbouring municipalities showed interest in Desilets’ plan to keep large hog barns out of the Wolf Creek watershed.
But the foundations of Deslilets’ plans began to crumble last fall.
Premium Pork, an Ontario-based hog production company, submitted a second application to have the barn approved and this time, with a different group of councillors in place, the project was approved in a six to one vote.
Construction could begin this spring, pending the arrival of necessary provincial permits.
“It really erodes your confidence in the democratic process when you look at the way the issue was handled here,” said Desilets.
“Almost everyone that lives near the proposed barns was against the idea but council approved it anyway.”
Although the Premium Pork project has already gone through a technical review process, Desilets is concerned that injecting liquid hog manure on farmland could damage waterways given the area’s unique topography and high potential for spring runoff.
He and others at the Wolf Creek Conservation Group are also concerned about the impact the barn will have on tourism and with the amount off water required to run the barn, which is estimated at five million gallons annually.
Wayne Drul, an Oakburn area grain farmer who partnered with Premium Pork in acquiring the necessary government approvals, said Desilets’ arguments don’t hold water.
Drul, whose farmyard is less than three km from Desilets’, said the project’s proponents are responsible corporate citizens that followed the necessary procedures and have no intention of damaging the environment.
With the help of engineers, Drul said they examined the impact on local water supplies. They looked at soil types and nutrient levels to ensure that liquid manure disposal was a viable option and secured a base of farmland where the manure could be injected using approved procedures.
They also identified a suitable location for an earthen lagoon where liquid manure could be stored safely according to provincial guidelines.
All these details and others were submitted to the province and approved as part of the technical review process in Manitoba.
At the municipal level, a conditional use hearing was held, inviting concerned ratepayers to voice their opinions.
To Drul, a local investor in the multi-million dollar project, the six to one approval by municipal councillors represented a much-anticipated breakthrough in a long and frustrating approval process.
“There are opponents to this barn application, as there are to most barn applications.
“However, there are also a lot of people in this municipality that don’t have a problem with the project,” said Drul, who owns about 1,600 acres of land in the area and farms another 2,700.
“The way I look at it, today we have zero jobs in this municipality besides what’s already here for farming. I’m offering the municipality 10 viable jobs that aren’t here today.
“I said to these folks (who oppose the barns) … ‘Give me an alternative’,” Drul said.
“It’s now more than three years later and I don’t see anyone coming up with any new ideas.”
Drul’s argument is a common refrain among those who promote industrialized hog production.
It touches on a variety of intertwined issues that include rural depopulation, loss of family farms due to decreasing profit margins, and the need to increase production to capture economies of scale.
To many, including Drul, efficient, large-scale production has become a fact of life for Canadian farmers. In their view, successful farmers must produce more to survive.
“The hog industry is an economies of scale game, just like grain farming, cattle farming and almost every other aspect of agriculture,” Drul said.
“Today, you need to have economies of scale to be able to operate at that kind of margin.
“If that wasn’t the case, you’d have all kinds of people raising a hundred or 200 or 300 sows in the area, but that’s not the case.”
From Drul’s perspective, expanding the livestock industry is an obvious way to keep rural communities from losing more families.
“There’s a lot of people’s sons who have already left agriculture because there’s not enough equity in the farms and not enough profit at the end of the day,” he said.
“I respect Roger’s (Desilets’) opinion … but we need to move on. We can’t stand still and basically sit on the sidelines as rural areas go into oblivion.”
Economics aside, Desilets’ group is continuing to fight the project.
Members have contacted provincial officials in charge of granting water use permits and manure storage permits.
They are also working with members of a local First Nations group that has expressed concerns about water availability, contaminated spring runoff and odours.
“There are kids and there are elderly people that will be affected by the fumes and it doesn’t matter which way the wind is blowing,” Desilets said. “There are neighbours all around the barn site so someone’s going to get it.”
“We kind of let our guard down I guess, but we didn’t know (after the first municipal vote) whether this was a dead issue or not,” he added.
“What we could have done, should have done, was find candidates in the last municipal election who were opposed to the idea.”
Weanlings from the Strathclair barn would be shipped to Iowa to be fed out and slaughtered.
