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Industry Partners
Prairie Swine Centre is an affiliate of the University of Saskatchewan
Prairie Swine Centre is grateful for the assistance of the George Morris Centre in developing the economics portion of Pork Insight.
Financial support for the Enterprise Model Project and Pork Insight has been provided by:
FACTORS INFLUENCING ILLINOIS FARMLAND VALUES
Posted in: Production by admin on January 1, 2006 | No Comments
Profitability, Costs & Benchmarks
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Latta Harris Hanon & Penningroth L.L.P. (LHHP) has been around since the early 1950’s with approximately 50 full-time equivalent personnel and 50% of their business is agricultural clients. LHHP works with producers and sells over 4,000,000 market hogs per year. With approximately 250 swine producing clients. LHHP provides value-added services emphasized for pork producers. Key factors regarding pork producers profit potential is the herd health, because the highest cost producers have poor herd health. Feed efficiency and feed cost also contribute to producer’s profits. Each 5% increase in feed cost/lb of feed = $1.14/cwt. Feed only for need, do not overfeed. Design and adhere to efficient feed budgets. Also purchase feed in a competitive fashion. Producers could also sell at a heavier weights and sell some wean pigs from time-to-time. This should cause a 5% improvement in capacity utilization. Increased sow herd productivity should also increase profit. The producer’s priorities should be getting the right people on the bus, and the wrong ones off. If you are the owner ask yourself if you are the right person? After obtaining the right people, focus on training and development. Also get on top of herd health issues fast; stay on top because all producers have recurring health challenges. Low-cost producers recover much faster. The keys are the quality of vet, personnel and a system that allows adaptations of pig flows. The producer must also use proven bio-security methods. In order to reduce feed costs to the 90th percentile or better you must own your own mill; do a KSU-type analysis; get your key ingredients directly; improve sow herd productivity; have your farm evaluated by two top-flight consulting DVMs, at least once a year. Evaluate genetic performance, sourcing, be willing to change; and overall, get efficient before getting bigger
Covering New Ground: Manitoba Agricultural Sustainability Initiative – 1998-2005 Activity Directory
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Covering New Ground is a provincially funded program to address agricultural
sustainability in Manitoba. The Covering New Ground (CNG) program began in
1998 and has an annual budget of approximately $1.2 million. The primary goal
of the program is to promote awareness and uptake of agricultural practices that
promote economic diversification and competitiveness while improving the longterm
sustainability of the natural resources in agro-Manitoba. Covering New
Ground accomplishes this mandate by partnering with local producer groups,
non-government agencies and provincial commodity organizations to deliver
applied research, demonstration and technology transfer projects.
The Covering New Ground 1998-2005 Activity Directory was developed to
provide a listing of the projects and activities which have been funded during the
past 5 years. The directory is organized by the three main priority areas of CNG:
• Integrated Pest Management,
• Sustainable Crop Management, and
• Sustainable Forage and Livestock Management.
Each section is further divided by year and region. CNG program priorities and
goals are structured to reflect the unique characteristics and challenges of each
agricultural region and agricultural sector in Manitoba according to regions with their geographic boundaries.
On-farm demonstration of a technology for recuperation and elimination of methane from the manure storage tank
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The Canadian swine industry produces around 2 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalents of methane gas per year. This corresponds to 54% of the emissions coming from manure management in Canada. A reduction in methane emissions would mean a better management of organic carbon coming from manure. Regarding dinitrogen oxide (N2O), pig manure emits annually 130 000 tons of this gas in CO2 equivalents. Reducing these nitrogen losses to the atmosphere would improve the energy efficiency of soil fertilizers. The efficiency of a floating roof to reduce nitrogen losses and the ability of a biofilter to trap and oxidize methane emitted from a slurry storage tank had been examined. This study confirmed that a covered tank emits much less ammonia than a non-covered one. This improved nitrogen conservation reduces the cost of nitrogen fertilizers. Considering annual precipitations of 600mm, a floating roof increases the storage capacity of the tank by 15%. Generally, installing a cover on an existing tank is less expensive than building a new covered tank. According to literature, hermetic covers offer an excellent odour-reducing potential. In terms of methane oxidization and its consequent decreased emission, biofiltration showed very encouraging results: a decrease in methane emissions by 80% or more with every type of filter material tested. Thus, a floating cover can altogether decrease odours and manure dilution, and increase the storage capacity of the tank and the nitrogen concentration of the pig slurry.
Pilot project on composting dead animals with the Biovator(TM) composter
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A cylindrical composter designed for composting dead animals has been commercialized for a certain time in Canada under the brand name BiovatorTM.. The main objective was to confirm the efficiency of the BiovatorTM. in Québec’s province pig farms. After a technical adaptation period, the appropriate stability of the process has been reached. Numerous samplings and physicochemical, microbiological and pathogenicity analyses showed that the compost, although not mature, is adequate for spreading in the field, under Québec’s governmental dispositions, having interesting soil fertilizer and amendment characteristics. Despite episodes of less intense composting due to massive inputs of swine carcasses (associated with a temperature drop inside the first section of the composter), the process has always been stabilized afterwards. Moreover, no leachate run-off was observed. The compost produced was stored on a concrete slab, in an area protected against bad weather. An economical study was also done, detailing the costs related to this technology and offering an interesting decision-making tool. Québec’s ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food validated this new technology. This project showed the BiovatorTM to have many advantages: it requires little more labour than for the carcass collection service, performs efficiently in the diverse weather conditions of southern Québec, allows rapid removal of pig carcasses from the buildings and rapidly decomposes those carcasses (within two weeks). It also eliminates the cost of the dead stock collection service and the risk of contamination by the incoming collection trucks.
SIDE-DELIVERY SPREADING OF MANURE
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Nitrogen budgets and losses in livestock systems
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