Better Pork - June 2007
Behind The Lines
Our intensive PRRS coverage, which began in the April issue of Better Pork, continues this month. In our herd health section, which begins on page 66, you’ll find Dr. Ernest Sanford’s take on developments with the ongoing PRRS Project, now two years old.
But our reporting on PRRS doesn’t end there.
In this space, in the April issue, we applauded three participants in our ongoing PRRS series for their willingness to step forward and tell all – for no other benefit than the satisfaction of helping fellow producers. It’s a welcome change from the every-man-for-himself attitude of which – with a few exceptions such as 3 P, whose members, have defied the odds to process their own hogs – we’ve seen too much in the pork industry in recent years.
Now on page 20, we introduce Ron Manjin and his son Glen, Darryl Terpstra and his sister, Cheryl, and Piet Vanden Boogaard, who share the ups and downs they experienced in dealing with the devastation of PRRS. And we also follow up on the original three producers featured in our April cover story to see how their strategies are holding up with the passage of time.
There is another kind of co-operation that you’ll learn about in this month’s cover story and it’s particularly fitting that Varna farrow-to-finisher Bev Hill appears on our cover as one of several spokespeople for the concept of benchmarking. Many of you will remember Bev’s father Gordon who, as president of the Ontario Farmers Union back in the 1950s, emerged as a strong advocate of farmer co-operation. During a later term as Ontario Federation of Agriculture president from 1969 to 1976, Gordon became known for his passionate speeches across the province urging farmers to work together to manage the changes facing agriculture.
Following in his father’s footsteps, Bev has been active in a wide range of farm groups. Now he and his fellow benchmarkers have emerged to give us another example of how working together and sharing information can generate big returns. Benchmarking group members compare their production numbers with others in the group. They share a trust level which ensures that financial information won’t be leaked outside the group and the same trust ensures confidence in the data. That means group members have real data against which to compare their own performance and don’t have to rely on generic numbers available from sources like governments and input suppliers.
It’s no secret that management clubs have helped to give forward-looking producers of other commodities an edge, most notably in Quebec, which arguably leads the country in a co-operative approach to farming.
Perhaps Goderich sow operator Gilbert Vanden Heuvel, a member of a different benchmarking group than Hill, says it best: “You can’t go through life with catchers’ mitts on both hands. You have to give back.”
The major costs of belonging to a benchmarking group are the damage to your ego if your operation is underperforming and the time spent to assemble and input data in a standardized manner.
Seems like a no-brainer. BP
ROBERT IRWIN
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