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The Rural Voice, 2001-03, Page 44Whittington said. Despite the fact land can be bought for $500 an acre in Saskatchewan it can cost a great deal to get a site ready. In one case it cost the Swine Centre $37,000 to install a gas line 10 a site. It's been estimated that a 5000 -sow Sask- atchewan site will have $300,000 tied up before a shovel goes in the ground. This high cost of development means Saskatchewan can't afford to have 150-200 sow units, he said. "Ontario has it right," Whittington said. "If we could build 250 -sow farms, we would." What's more, distances in Saskatchewan make loops nearly impossible because it might mean transporting weaner pigs for two or three hours from one farm to another. Ontario has the advantage of a well-developed supplier infra- structure while Saskatchewan is just beginning to develop one. Certainly western producers have a feed cost advantage, about 4.4 per cent lower than Ontario across the prairies as a whole but 15 per cent in KELLY PORTABLE SEED CLEANING Grain, Beans and Forages Bag or Bulk Convenient and Economical Serving Mid -Western Ontario Kincardine, Ontario N2Z 2X4 396-4559 1-888-844-1333 40 THE RURAL VOICE News Manitoba where the long distance to export markets keeps the price of feed grains low. But there's as great a variation between individual farms as there is between regions, Whittington said. There can be a 20 per cent difference between feed costs from one Alberta farm and another. As well, Whittington pointed out, one of North America's biggest pork production areas in North Carolina is hardly known for its cheap feed costs. Four of five of the top pork production regions in the world have to import feed, he said. The wide open spaces of the West give a herd health advantage to producers there but by standards of some of the world's biggest pork producers, Ontario is hardly crowded. Southwestern Ontario has about 252 pigs per square mile while the Netherlands has 2,380. Ontario has the advantage of a wide pool of knowledgeable swine workers while Saskatchewan spends a significant amount on employee training. It costs $5,000 to $6,000 every time an employee is lost, and that doesn't include the lost productivity, he said. Availability of capital has hampered the development of Saskatchewan's huge sites, Whittington says. The long development time for these large sites means companies are constantly looking to raise capital during a down cycle.0 Pig manure could be sought out, research shows Rather than worrying about how to get rid of liquid pig manure, research shows someday vegetable growers may seek out manure as a control for soil -borne pathogens. George Lazarovits, of the southern crop protection and food research centre at Agriculture and Agrifood Canada in London reported at the Centralia Swine Research,Update, January 31, that liquid swine manure (LSM), can kill the fungus V. dahliae which causes verticullium wilt and the bacterium Streptomyces scabies which causes potato scab, but a reduced soil pH is essential. A direct correlation was observed between the destruction of the pathogens and reduction in soil pH. The kill was nearly 100 per cent in a site where the pH was 5 but there was complete survival where pH increased to the range of 6-7.5. The various pests mentioned play havoc with potato production. The fungus that causes verticillium wilt (which leads to early dying in potatoes and loss of production), can live on in the soil for up to 10 years meaning producers can't possibly wait long enough in a rotation to be rid of it. It costs too much to use a fungicide on the soil to kill the fungus. Nematodes are another pest that seems to enhance verticillium wilt by damaging the potatoes themselves. In one case, a farmer had half the crop delivered to the buyer rejected, a lostsof $1,100 an acre, Lazarovits said. In field tests it seemed the drier the soil the better as far as effectiveness of LSM was concerned. The manure can kill verticillium dahliae by at least three mechanisms, Lazarovits reported: volatile fatty acids, ammonia and nitrous acid. Sixty-five per cent of the manures tested had sufficient concentrations of volatile fatty acids to kill fungus in the soil. If the discoveries are further proven in field tests, it would open a value-added opportunity for swine farmers to sell their liquid manure to potato, tomatoes and vegetable farmers, Lazarovits said.0 Wheat top crop, Johnston argues In today's economic environment where all crop profits are marginal, wheat is the number one crop, says Peter Johnson, cereals specialist with OMAFRA in Stratford. "Anyone not growing wheat is missing the boat," said Johnson, speaking to the annual meeting of the Huron County Soil and Crop Improvement Association in Blyth, Jan. 30. "I've always said we should grow a million acres of wheat in Ontario."