Someday, a PhD student in agricultural economics will write her thesis on Manitoba’s hog industry.
The paper won’t focus on marketing hogs or production economics. Instead, it will explain how Manitoba farmers lost their social licence to raise hogs.
Only three or four hog barns have been built in Manitoba since 2007. Over the same period, Minnesota and Iowa farmers have erected hundreds of new barns.
The Manitoba Pork Council and others blame excessive, costly and ridiculous manure management regulations for the inactivity.
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Karl Kynoch, Manitoba Pork chair, said the province wants new barns to have “zero impact” on the environment, which is the definition of ridiculous, because flushing a toilet has an environmental consequence.
The province has taken a hard-line stance with the hog industry because every story, and every regulation, needs a villain.
When massive algal blooms covered Lake Winnipeg in the mid-2000s and parents were scared to let their kids and dogs swim in the lake, the NDP government didn’t hesitate to lay blame. It ruthlessly pointed the finger at hog farmers and vowed to crack down on the polluters.
Scientists have since disproved, unequivocally, the link between hog manure and Lake Winnipeg water quality. Kynoch estimated that hog barns contribute .5 percent of the total phosphorus flowing into the lake.
Economics are also on the pork industry’s side.
Manitoba has two of the largest pork processing plants in Canada, the industry employs 13,000 people and pigs and pork generate more export dollars than any other industry in the province. But when it comes to a social licence to farm, facts and figures often don’t matter. Public perception is king.
Many Winnipeggers and cottage owners bought the province’s propaganda and have never forgiven hog farmers for wrecking the lake.
Manitoba Pork has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on billboards and bus ads in Winnipeg to promote the environmental sustainability of hog farming. The reactive effort may eventually restore the industry’s reputation or the province may wake up and realize it’s killing a critical industry.
In the meantime, Canadian farmers should take note. Losing the licence to farm can happen in a day. Regaining public trust can take decades.
