The Rural Voice, 1978-04, Page 15A Matter of Principal
by J. Carl Hemingway
The holidays are over for this winter and it's back to the
routine of farming. Fortunately the "routine" is a changeable
one which makes it interesting. Sometimes good and at others a
bit discouraging.
In my March article which I wrote about Feb. 15th I forecast
that the increased dressed weight due to the new grading
regulations plus the expected increase of hogs going to market
would have reduced the price of hogs by the time you received
the "Rural Voice". Unfortunately 1 was right.
After going over my hog statements -
Feb. 14th $72.84 base price
Feb. 27th $69.03 base price
Mar. 3rd $66.67 base price
Mar. 14th $65.33 base price
And the report for to -day March 20 was about 63.00 average.
I think I would have been happier on my return if I had been
wrong.
In spite of statements to the contrary the increased supplies of
Canadian Pork aren't being absorbed into the Canadian market
in sufficient quantities to hold the price up. U.S. prices have
dropped accordingly and we can't expect any reduction in
imports to bolster the Canadian price.
Supply and demand continues to control the price of products
at the farm gate.
***
However we had a good trip to Florida and back. We left
February 28 and had cold weather almost to the Georgia border.
We stopped over at Chattanooga and looked out in the morning
to see nice big. fluffy snow -flakes floating gently down. How
could we feel home -sick! Some miles on the road farther south
we were made to feel very much at home by a snow storm that
reduced visibility to 50 percent.
We made it to Auburndale. near Lakeland, where we had 70
degree temperature for a week which was very pleasant except
for one rainy afternoon.
Unfortunately we had made plans to visit a beef feedlot and it
was too wet to make the tour and see the 28,000 cattle. We didn't
even get any information officially but while we were waiting to
see if the weather would clear up I got talking with the security
guard at the gate. He had been raised in Maine within sight of
the Canadian border and was somewhat pro Canadian.
The owners buy all the cattle and feed. They experimented
with about 50 acres of sorghum. sown broadcast, and harvested
as forage. They purchase a considerable portion of their feed as
corn sileage from the Plains Georgia area, "Jimmy Carter
country" hauling it some 300 miles. They also purchase alfalfa
"pellets" from about 100 miles farther south in Florida. The
alfalfa is grown on irrigated land.
The remainder of the ration is made up of the refuse from the
cotton processing industry, hulls and cottonseed meal, citrus
pulp and added minerals. Little or no grain is fed.
The protein requirements are supplemented by recycling the
waste from the cattle and also some waste from the broiler barns.
Beginner wages for feed -lot labour is $2.70 per hour with an
increase in 60 days if satisfactory: they have difficulty in getting
reliable help.
This is the competition we face and on the surface it doesn't
seem serious. However with feed grains at such a low price that
growing your own doesn't mean much of an income for the small
operator he has to find a very large percentage of his income
from the feeding end of his operation.
They have a meat processing plant and claim that feeding is
more profitable than the plant.
This is hard for me to believe. However if they figure their
profits on sales of cattle and processed products and forget the
difference of turns over time of their investment I don't doubt
that the statement is true and makes wonderful publicity for the
consumer.
Otherwise it could only be true if their cost of feed from the
citrus industry is next to nothing but this could only support a
very small percentage of the total amount of beef that is required
for the American population.
We also visited an 850 cow dairy farm. Again the feed was all
purchased as a complete ration. This was made up almost totall\
from by-products of the cotton and citrus industries. The total
production went into the fluid market at about $12.50 per cent.
The milking parlour held 24 cows with three employees doing
the milking at a time. Milking was done on a 24 hour basis with
three shifts in the milking parlour with pipe line milkers. The
manager didn't seem to feel it was a highly profitable method of
production.
From what we could see of the cows in the feedlots it seemed
that holsteins and jerserys were about equal. They apparently
produced their replacements.
We didn't do a great deal of sight-seeing as we seemed to be
more interested in enjoying a leisurely holiday. We moved over
to Dundee to a motel with a heated pool for the last four days and
enjoyed warm sunny weather with swimming and shuffle board
for amusement.
On the way home we visited a "Stephen Foster" memorial
museum at White Springs, Florida and had a boat ride on the
Swannee River.
A little farther along we took a side trip to the "Last Sea".
This is located in a large cave near Sweetwater, Tennessee. It is
the largest underground lake in the world and extends over four
and one half acres.
We were taken for a boat ride and saw large rainbow trout with
which the lake was stocked. Their colours were much lighter and
they don't reproduce as the water is too deep for them to spawn.
There were about 20 in our tour party at the lake and every one
of us was from Ontario. I guess times aren't quite as bad as we
like to make out.
As we continued home the snow cover continued to increase
and we were somewhat dissappointed to find about the same
amount at home as what we had left.
Scrn
dUat
The illness you'll never see
coming. Get in shape— and
don't give the enemy
a big target.
Fitness is fun.
Try some. PaRT/C/Pa[T/On
THE RURAL VOICE/APRIL 1978. PG. 15.