The Rural Voice, 1983-10, Page 13e
With his two sons, from left: Gerald, Harold Poechman and Wayne.
low market prices and high feed
prices at the present time. With dry
corn costing $190 per tonne,
Poechman says that farmers are cut-
ting back on pigs because they can't
afford to buy feed. "Pork prices are
going to have to go up or there'll be a
lot less pigs. But that's the way farm-
ing is", he says. "It's always been an
up and down type thing unless you're
on a controlled marketing system.
But the problem with the free
marketing system is that the downs
seem to be lasting a lot longer than
the ups and this is what catches so
many of the beginning farmers, and
they're having extreme difficulty."
The past six months in the hog in-
dustry has been a prime example of
an up and down situation with
weaner pig prices dropping from a
high of $1.75 per lb. to 50c per lb.
"How can you calculate a cash flow
for the bank when you have fluctua-
tion from an extreme high to such a
low all within six months;"
Poechman asks. Some type of control
is necessary, he feels, but regards
stabilization as only a bandage treat-
ment for a short period of time. "We
know the number of producers and
we know the amount of product
needed,"Poechman says,and he feels
that controls should be based on the
person's last five years of production
and acreage involved.
He is in favour of a marketing
board along the lines of the Egg Pro-
ducers Marketing Board of which he
is a member. The 4,000 laying hens
on the Poechman farm have provided
a steady, reliable income for the fami-
ly, something to fall back on when
hog and cattle prices fall.
Hens are fed a combination of soy-
bean meal, a hen pre -mix, dry corn
and barley which are mixed by a Far-
matic feed mill. The feed factory is a
convenience that has saved
Poechman many hours of labour not
only for hen feed but for his pigs and
cattle.
Cash cropping has proven a very
lucrative market for Poechman this
year and for the first time he has for-
ward -contracted corn on the futures
market to high -moisture corn buyers.
Poechman dries up to 200 tonnes of
corn per year for his own use, and
also puts a lot of high moisture corn
in his silos. Corn was the chief dollar -
maker for Poechman ten years ago,
but lately wheat has been more pro-
fitable and now corn is back into the
mainstream. Corn prices have sharply
increased from Tess than $80 per
tonne last year to $160 per tonne this
year.
While corn prices are high this
year, so is the cost of planting and
there are drawbacks with weeds, root -
worm and erosion posing major pro-
blems. Poechman practises strip far-
ming with long narrow fields that are
rotated for soil conservation and
rootworm control. He plows and
plants according to the topography of
the land. Flat land with little
likelihood of erosion is plowed last
thing in the fall and rolling land with
more erosion risk is plowed in the spr-
ing. Fall wheat is a good erosion con-
troller, Poechman feels, as well as
having a high straw potential,
something that is lacking with a corn
crop.
Red clover seed is mixed with fer-
tilizer when it is put on the wheat in
the spring and provides a nitrogen
builder when it is plowed down. "It's
the cheapest soil builder we know
of�" Poechman says. He realizes a
crop yield of fifty bushel of wheat per
THE RURAL VOICE. OCTOBER 1983 PG 11