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40 THE RURAL VOICE
ounce steaks.'
"I don't understand why the
debate still rages on about what the
ideal size of animal is. That was
figured out in pigs and chickens and
turkeys years ago. But the cattle
industry keeps going round and
round."
Shaver has pulled back from a
push for foreign sales after being
burned in the expensive collapse of
partners in Hungary and Australia so
he now questions the value of expon
markets. "There's a high risk of not
being paid when you ship products
abroad. You tend to want to know the
person you're doing business with."
It can take 100 hours to put
together an international deal and if
you don't get paid, it's all wasted.
As well, the impact of the
drought situation in Alberta
and Saskatchewan shows the
need to have franchises in as many
different parts of the country as
possible, he says.
"1 don't expect good sales to
Alberta or Saskatchewan at all for the
next year or two, because they're in
such desperate shape," he says of the
part of the country that typically
provides some of his best sales.
From a food security point of
view, does it make sense then for a
country to put 70 per cent of its cattle
production in areas as subject to
drought as Alberta and
Saskatchewan, he wonders.
"Why don't governments
encourage growth here in Ontario.
They can talk all they want about the
price of land for soybeans and corn
production but in every county
there's marginal land. I think with
satellite imagery today it would be so
easy to recognize what lands are
sensitive to erosion and probably not
suitable for cropping."
It would take at least 100 cows
and their progeny to support an
individual family and this requires a
certain land -base, he says unlike pork
of chickens which can be fed by
imported feed. The family would
need take revenue out in different
forms, from cull cows and open
heifers in fall, finished steers and
heifers in the spring.
But if all the slaughter plants in
Ontario die because the cow herd has
dropped so much that there's not
enough business, then there won't be