The Rural Voice, 1980-08, Page 4Wheat
Crop
KEN R.
CAMPBELL
FARMS LTD.
R.R. 1 Dublin 527-0249
PG. 2 THE RURAL VOICE/AUGUST 1980
LETTERS
How else do we restrain
enthusiastic hog producers?
Dear Adrian Vos:
I know how you feel about supply management for hogs from
reading your articles. I am aware of the problems and drawbacks
of quotas and supply management, but how else are you going to
restrain Ontario's enthusiastic hog producers?
I think you should give some space in Rural Voice to the other
side of the argument - one version, I give below:
So Ontario hog producers suffer from an Ostrich Syndrome?—
head in sand unwilling to see the need for a National Supply
Management scheme.
For the past 4 to 5 years U.S. and Western Canadian hog
producers didn't expand hog numbers because of high grain
prices and cold winter mortality. This allowed a massive
expansion in Ontario and Quebec without hurting prices. Finally
in '79 the expansion came and the bubble burst.
Many Ontario hog producers feel nothing has to be done. It's
just the hog cycle and production will drop soon and everything
will be rosy again.
NEW FACTORS
But there are some new factors in the Hog Business in 1980
which cause the supply to be more inelastic in the face of a price
decline. These are:
1. A higher proportion of hogs are produced by specialists with
efficient buildings and feeding systems unsuited to other
livestock enterprises - so they are locked in.
2. Raising hogs is a more pleasant and easier job than it used
to be due to labour saving schemes such as : liquid manure
relegates manure fork to musuem - auger feeding systems.
3. Cross breeding and Pig Testing have given hog producers
more profitable sows and market pigs.
4. Ontario hog producers tend to be younger than other
livestock producers because it was easier to get into hogs - faster
returns and no quotas. Younger farmers tend to be more heavily
mortgaged and so less able to cut back.
BOOSTED PRODUCTION
5. In Ontario the grain corn revolution has boosted hog
production. This wonderful feed grain is especially suited to hog
enterprises when combined with sealed silos and those amazing
little mix mills.
All these factors have tended to make hog production more
popular with Ontario farmers than it used to be - so if supply and
demand are to be kept in balance we must develop a system for
restraining the supply of pork nationally.
Yours truly,
Syd Smith,
R.R. 3, Teeswater
T
The Rural Voice
Box 10, Blyth
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