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12
Better Pork
February 2017
LABEL
CLAIMS
produce a cost of production plus a
premium, you are making your farm
viable.”
Such farm viability has been
achieved on the ground, in real ways.
Ferguson cited John Top, of Top
Farms, in Salford, Ont.
According to Ferguson, Top and
his son farm 130 sows, farrow to
finish, and recently shifted from
conventional hog farming to organic
farming, with the assistance of Grand
Valley Fortifiers.
“First, I thought it was not possi-
ble,” Top notes in an informational
video. “But we threw some numbers
around, and we talked to the book-
keeper, to the banker, we got financ-
ing in place, and they (Grand Valley)
really supported us in setting up and
renovating into the organic market.”
In the end, Top and his investors
found that “the organic for the smaller
operations was the way to go.”
The shift to organic also allowed
Top’s son to move home and take up
hog farming as well.
“Our son came home full time,”
Top says. “He always wanted to farm,
(but) in the conventional there was
no future. Now, in the organic, we got
a real bright future.
“At the end of the day … I eat my
supper with a smile. With the
organic, or the humane pork, you
will have a bright future.”
The hullabaloo
When Katie MacDonald spoke with
farmers for her research on the pork
value chain, she noted that some did
not know what all the hullabaloo was
about, especially over label claims
such as “raised without the use of
added hormones” which are already
regulated.
But pork farmers produce for an
open marketplace, after all. It’s what
the buyers want that raises demand
for specific products. And as political
economist Adam Smith would tell us,
with demand come price increases.
If farmers want to produce a
product with a premium attached to
it, they may consider producing what
the 98 per cent are asking for: label
claims and all.
If it ends with a smile on your face
at dinner time, as it does with John
Top in Salford, then the payoff is
pretty good as well.
BP
Sows feed on grass in a pasture area just in front of the barns at
John Top’s Salford, Ont. organic farm.