Gathering and analyzing current data on such topics
\nas size and number of farms, off-farm income, business
\nstructures being used and producer demographics is
\nimportant if policies are to be developed that benefit not
\nonly the present producer base, but also future generations
\nof producers.
\nTo collect information about the Ontario pork industry
\nand identify current trends, Ken McEwan, College Professor,
\nand Lynn Marchand, Research Associate, of the University
\nof Guelph\u2019s Ridgetown Campus spent last year surveying all
\nindividuals who are raising one or more pigs. McEwan and
\nMarchand then developed a database which includes producer
\nage and level of education, farm business structure,
\ntype of production, pig inventory, age of facilities, future
\nexpansion or contraction plans and more. It was found that about 40 per cent of farrow-to-finish respondents are
\nconsidered small swine operations, with 50 or fewer sows. The researchers also found that there are fewer small
\nproducers today and more large producers who are increasing
\nthe size of their operations. In total, about 43 per cent of swine operations in the
\nprovince are sole proprietor, 28 per cent are partnerships, 24
\nper cent are family corporations and five per cent are business
\ncorporations. Demographics of farmers have also changed. As would
\nbe expected, the past seven years has seen the proportion
\nof farmers over 55 years old rise from about 20 per cent to
\n23 per cent. Older farmers leaving the industry outnumber
\nthe number of young farmers by almost three to one. Perhaps the most surprising survey results have to
\ndo with off-farm employment income. McEwan and
\nMarchand found that it exists on farms of all sizes, not just
\non small farms. \u201cAbout 23 per cent of all those surveyed
\nreported that they had off-farm employment income,\u201d
\nMcEwan reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gathering and analyzing current data on such topics as size and number of farms, off-farm income, business structures being used and producer demographics is important if policies are to be developed that benefit not only the present producer base, but also future generations of producers. To collect information about the Ontario pork industry and identify […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[930],"tags":[8882,10033,13816,6467,6468,6321,6469,286,562,5886,13370,9053,18204,12692,14784,6470,1612,24321,15459,22808,14,3301,33,16262,1324,2608,17743,27282,23760,2774,5269,5853,14980,1533,104,96,6471,431,35,20911,4874,18011],"class_list":["post-4606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-production","tag-al","tag-arc","tag-ass","tag-business-structure","tag-current","tag-database","tag-demographics","tag-dust","tag-farms","tag-farrow","tag-ken","tag-leg","tag-more-pig","tag-more-pigs","tag-ness","tag-off-farm-income","tag-ontario","tag-partners","tag-ped","tag-pic","tag-pig","tag-pig-industry","tag-pigs","tag-pl","tag-pork","tag-pork-industry","tag-prod","tag-production","tag-professor","tag-pulse","tag-report","tag-results","tag-search","tag-size","tag-sow","tag-sows","tag-statistics","tag-survey","tag-swine","tag-t","tag-tan","tag-tot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4606\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}