Three ways to grow a pig

BY SARA KEDDY

Kings County Register

No one’s been in their farm yard with a clipboard on how to do a business plan, access money or get through the “transition” the provincial government expects from hog growers.

Kings farmers are gathering their own resources to cope with the $84 they got for a pig last week - it costs almost twice that to raise one. They have huge debt, worthless, living assets; large infrastructure and the stress of knowing their home and family life is tied to it all.

Growing what she knows

Linda Tupper of Morristown admits she may be a fool to stay in sow and market production.

“I’m thinking I can stay, hang on, wait for whatever - but all I can say is how thankful I am I didn’t borrow more.

“And that’s crazy: you can go bankrupt for $1 or $800,000.”

Her plan is to use expected federal CAIS money - she applied back in January - to pay fall and winter feed bills, continue to send an average of 170 pigs a week to Larsens and hope the PEI plant aiming to process higher-grade omega-3 pork gathers enough orders it will be able to take her animals by March.

“But, at $90 a pig, I’ll be lucky to see the end of November.

“It’s just depressing - I can’t keep up with it, but I have no alternative but to stay.”

She’s spent the past year on a farm business plan, but can’t switch her operation to the weaner business or reduce to pursue value-added or direct sales. She’s sold as much farm land around her barns and house as she can to reduce farm debt, but still owes $165,000. Her sows - if she sold them - are worth just $40,000, and the 3,000 babies they produce are worthless.

“If I can get to PEI and put in five years, I could walk away and have my home.”

Go big or go broke

Terry Beck of North Kingston is taking his hog farm in another direction, borrowing hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a 61-foot by 108-foot barn and taking his herd from 200 to 700 sows.

He’s joined five other Nova Scotian producers in a group that will do nothing but send weaner pigs - 21-day-old babies - to grow-out barns in Indiana.

“It’s pretty impressive - nothing but livestock and corn fields as far as you can see,” Beck says.

There’s the chance of profit shipping weaners to the States - after he pays barn rent, feed, labour and vet care costs.

“It’s a lot of money, a few sleepless nights and, as much as anything, the time frame is tight to make sure my new barn is ready, the stalls are in and the sows are bred.”

Beck’s first pigs should be on the road by the end of December.

That doesn’t help him now, though: he’s still feeding, growing and shipping hogs in his barns to processing, losing up to $60 on every one.

“I’ve had no advice, no real money from anyone,” Beck says. “I gave up trying to guess, and I’m looking at it myself. If it works, great; if not, we’ll have to do something else.”

Making the farm-to-table connection

Tremont hog grower Vance Morse is worried, with all the talk and concern for buying local these past few months, people “may not have gotten it yet.”

He’s spent the last six months trying to downsize his operation and launch a direct marketing project at the same time.

“There is potential,” Morse says, in selling from his farm to buyers at farm markets and local outlets.

“If every one of the people at all the meetings in the past year bought local, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

Morse has been lugging coolers of Windy View Farm’s pork to the Annapolis Royal farmers’ market all season and has rave reviews for how quickly people chose his products. A son looked after the Wolfville Farmers’ Market, but Morse says business has been slow - hardly enough to pay his gas. Still, the markets are “the only hope we’ve got.”

As the market season winds down for winter business, Morse is focusing on getting his pork into small restaurants and stores and building on-line orders and repeat business. He’s looking at adding regular poultry and beef products, and growing vegetables next season.

Through it all, though, he’s still feeding 140 sows: “it’s costing me a fortune,” and he’s losing money on every pig (40 or 50 every week) he takes to the processing plants. He figures he needs 10 or 15 sows to supply his direct marketing future, but it takes six months to move the animals in his barns out.

“It hasn’t cut down on the time or the work around the farm at all, and I’m doing as much as I can to build the market business.

“There is a living in doing it, but people have to come up to the bat. When you buy something from me, you know the money goes right to me - the farmer. It supports me and your food chain. Everyone’s happy.”