Ground up or top down?
Setting up a marketing agency for the wild boar industry is no easy task, and prairie producers are going in different directions while trying to secure slaughter and buyers.
One group of wild boar producers in northeastern Saskatchewan is building a marketing agency from the ground up. From a base of 25 local farmers, they have been producing enough animals to contract slaughter at a federally inspected plant and develop and produce wild boar foods. That group is now trying to draw the rest of Western Canada’s wild boar producers into the co-operative.
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At the same time, the wild boar industry’s official organization is trying to set up a cross-prairie, new generation co-operative to arrange slaughter and find markets for wild boar products. It wants to contract slaughter in a plant that meets European Union standards and then build such a plant once meat volume is large enough.
The two groups know of each other, but don’t intend to join forces.
“We think they’re trying to recreate the wheel,” said Steve Jenkins, president of Canadian Classic Wild Boar, the northeastern Saskatchewan group.
“When we went into it, we wanted to fill the marketing niche and now it seems the wild boar association wants to write that into their aims.”
A wild boar association consultant said the association respects Jenkins’ group, but must be politely skeptical about any small group’s chances of success.
“I’ve helped eight or nine (groups of wild boar producers) get set up over the last four years,” said Al Choquer, a livestock industry consultant who has worked for the federal government and now works for Saskatchewan Agriculture.
“We meet, talk, set up plans … . Two weeks later they’re all fighting.”
Some groups have had internal problems, and some once-cohesive groups have been undermined by others, said Choquer.
“In the past, whenever a group would try to get together to try to market … someone else would come in and either undercut or steal their buyer,” he said. “There were so many unscrupulous people.”
The result is an industry reduced to mostly farm gate sales, Choquer said. Many producers left the industry because of that, which has threatened its future.
After years of small-scale wild boar co-op failures, many producers decided it was time to set up something on a prairie-wide scale.
“The feeling was that there was a lot of competition in the industry, where there should have been co-operation.”
The wild boar association is trying to develop a new generation co-operative that will raise money from producers on a per boar basis. For every boar a producer wants to market through the co-op every year, he will have to buy a share.
The money will be used to pay for slaughter at a plant, to establish markets and to eventually build a plant. The new generation co-operative could be set up by early 1999.
Jenkins’ group has already done some of these things.
Their slaughter is done at TaiWan Packers in Moose Jaw, Sask. Smoked chops and other wild boar meats are made at Thomson Meats in Melfort, Sask., and they have sold products through Saskatchewan retail co-ops.
The Jenkins group started as a private local group, but now Jenkins said it has turned itself into a new generation co-operative and opened its doors to producers across the Prairies.
“The reason we went to a public co-operative was to increase the resource base, because the market is there. It just needs an organized approach to it,” said Jenkins. “We feel we’re doing that.”
The Jenkins’ group and the wild boar association have met to discuss joining forces, since they have similar goals. But Choquer said the two groups have gone in separate directions and will evolve as two entities.
“It would have been nice if what he (Jenkins) has and what the association was looking at now could have been worked into one unit,” said Choquer, who is helping organize the association’s co-operative drive.
“But if these two co-ops can work in synergism rather than in competition, (producers will benefit).”
For now, the two groups will follow their respective approaches, the northeastern Saskatchewan group building from a local base, and the association building itself on the ruins of many failed local co-operatives.
“Let’s continue with both our routes and perhaps down the road we can meet together,” said Choquer.
