land prices?

[cowman]

Well in my municipality injection is pretty well a requirement if you want to build a new dairy or hog barn. We don't have any new feedlots...at least of any size. Not too many of those being built lately?
By the way, while I was at that sale, the guy I was talking to told me there was another feedlot(3000 head) around Ponoka going down. He said the bank had already started the procedure to take them down.
I don't remember the names but it was a couple of brothers.
It almost seems that these mid sized lots can't cut it any more? That feeding cattle is moving towards the big lots? At one time there were a lot of smaller background type lots but a lot of them seem to have quit? I do believe these farmer/feeders were the backbone of the industry and kept the big boys honest?

[cowman]

There have been several smaller lots approved by the NRCB in the past year or so. The largest application was for 18,200 head.
Ponoka County is such a developed municipality that there likely isn't many parcels of land where a large new feedlot could locate.

[cowman]

I wonder if the trend will continue to more concentrated areas for feeding cattle(like feedlot alley) and maybe for hog production as well? If certain municipalities encourage ILOs while others discourage them, will the operators finally see the writing on the wall and move to the more friendly environment? Maybe Saskatchewan is a better place to raise hogs and fatten cattle?
Kind of tough for the farmers who live here and want to run an ILO but I guess they could move if they feel they can't survive?
I will note that the NRCB gave a large hog operation in Lacombe county the green light despite a very loud protest from some local residents? I wonder what would have happened if they had all put in applications for subdivision? Would that have been enough to hold up the hog barn developement?
In Red Deer County, just last year, a landowner was awarded a subdivision near a fairly big feedlot. The feedlot owner fought it tooth and nail because it would forever limit any expansion he might want in the future. The council went against all its own guidelines and granted the subdivision request after the subdividing landowner broke down in tears and bawled! The feedlot owner is pretty disgusted to say the least!

[cowman]

cowman, when an application is filed with a municipality it fixes the Minimum Distance Separation, if the county chooses to approve multi subdivisions within that MDS it will not have an effect on the application as only the residents close to the operation on the date part one of the application is filed are considered to be Directly Affected depending on the size of the operation. Most municipalities will not approve subdivision within the MDS because doing so is asking for conflicts due to the differening land uses.

Of course approving a subdivision does shut down any expansion opportunities for the cfo unless the owner of the subdivision will sign a waiver for a one time expansion.

The hog industry has been granted numerous approvals by the NRCB all across the province. When the province removed approving authority from municipalities the Minister ( Shirley ) stood at the AAMD C Convention and assured municipalities that the NRCB would monitor and enforce all municipal conditions on existing permits.

The industry has fought that tooth and nail, mainly the hog industry. They wrote to the current minister asking to be allowed to exist in peace without anyone checking to see if they were in compliance with their permits !! The only assurance that Albertans have of operations being in compliance and not posing a risk to the environment is ongoing monitoring of their operations to ensure that they are in compliance with conditions. The Auditor General included a recommendation in his report last year that the NRCB should step up the monitoring of existing operations, however, it is now being rumored that the new direction of the Operations side of the NRCB is to discontinue any monitoring of older operations that existed under municipal permits !!

[cowman]

I would think those older operations might just be the ones that need monitoring?
I would think that if those old operations aren't under any scrutiny they might just be a bit more valuable?
My hog farming Dutch neighbor bought an existing hog operation and quite frankly he has a bit of an attitude! He seems to have this idea that he has a God given right to do pretty well what ever he wants! He tends to drive the acreage owners nuts when he spreads manure! He has to spread his manure because his land is so polluted he can't get grain to stand up...even the hay falls down! This year he actually injected the manure into the hayland...although he said the cost was dear!
Now I am not concerned about his manure as I am not in the prevailing winds, but I do have a few things that bug me? I own land right beside his operation and he feeds all his deads to the coyotes, which is okay except the darned coyotes pack the bones all over my place and I got a flat tire driving over one! The other thing that bugs me is sometimes he is pretty slack about getting the lagoon cleaned out? Five years ago a big rain let it spill over down a runway into my pasture! It was like you sprayed it with roundup and the next year the darned thistles grew like crazy there!
Having said that he is a good neighbor overall, always willing to help you out and friendly as can be.

[cowman]

exactly why operations that existed prior to January 1,2002 need ongoing monitoring. Alberta Pork has a lot of clout with the powers that are in charge of Alberta Agriculture and their own lawyer ( AB Pork's ) is on the committee that is amending the AOPA legislation. Now, municipalities have not been invited to be on the committee so what is wrong with that picture ?

Every hog operation in AB is in a rural municipality and yet the government has not seen fit to invite municipalities to have input into proposed changes to the legislation !!!

Overflowing lagoons is a real compliance issue, an operator is required to keep sufficient freeboard to deal with any unexpected rainfall events.

According to the NRCB there are numerous leaking lagoons in AB., and if the NRCB is not allowed to continue monitoring the older operations these leaking lagoons will go undetected until they pose a major environmental problem or worse yet a health problem.

Rural municipalities were upset when the province took over responsibility for citing confined feeding operations but the one thing that did appease their concern was the promise of ongoing monitoring of existing operations.
The reason there is so much push back from industry is because they damn well know that there are a lot of existing operations with aging infrastructure that would need to upgrade.

The recent changes to the NRCB have seen a former Assistant Deputy Minister of Agriculture appointed to the interim CEO position, and he promptly hired a former Deputy Minister of Agriculture to work on new policies. In 2001, Shirley McLellan advised Albertans that the NRCB was being appointed as the agency to deal with all compliance and approvals of existing and new confined feeding operations and the reason for that was that the NRCB was an independent quasi judicial organization.

Now less than four years later AAFRD is basically running the show !!! Hardly much comfort to neighbours of any confined feeding operation when the Ministry that has set a benchmark of 20 million hogs in the province by 2010 is in charge of approving applications, and also responsible for any compliance !

[cowman]

Well emerald you seem to be fairly passionate about this?
Personally I kind of like hog farms...they put a lot of bucks into the community and they are good grain buyers!
I don't blame them for trying to make a buck. I do get a bit disgusted with the government though? Both the province and the darned municipality! The county was happy as hell to pass the buck to the NRCB because they were too darned wishy washy to uphold their own rules? Now they can pretend it is out of their hands and the bad guys are the NRCB! Instead of having the guts to say: No more hog barns. No more feedlots! We want to promote subdivisions where we can make some real money! And therfore justify their ludicrous salarys!
Now I do understand you were not getting in on the gravy train...ala... Red Deer county? And I do understand you were a "crusader", doing your part out of civic responsibility?
It is unfortunate that we have people who enter public life for gain...but that is a reality of our times?

[cowman]

cowman, my main issue is that if the government asssured municipalities that their conditions in municipal permits were going to be monitored by the NRCB that should continue to happen. It is up to municipalities to define in their municipal development plans where confined feeding operations are not appropriate. As we both know, there is urban growth expanding out into the traditional agricultural communities all across the province so it is going to be increasingly difficult to site any large confined feeding operations in many areas. For existing operations to live in harmony with their neighbours they need to ensure that they have the least negative impact possible. There are many large hog operations that are well managed and don't really cause many problems to the neighbours, but there are those that don't really care what the neighbours think and they are the ones that need to be monitored.

[cowman]

Interesting note on land prices. 155 acres(5 acres out with all buildings) sold down the road a couple of miles for $460,000 or$2967/acre. Roughest quarter around, hilly and a lot of brush! Bought by a suprvisor at the gas plant at Joffre.
Guess we'll have to up the oil lease money around here to reflect the new reality?

[cowman]

Land prices in Alberta are causing some of the livestock industry to look to the east to expand. I was advised today that the cost per sow unit to build an operation in Manitoba is $250.00 and $100 more in Alberta due to land prices.
Of course the fact that there is a large slaughter plant in Manitoba is another factor. Even in my part of the province people are buying up small acreages 12 miles from town and putting up mansions on them. Mind you they all seem to want a horse or two but have no clue what a fence should look like.
I am afraid that if there is another downturn in the industry there will be a lot of people wondering how to pay off high mortgage payments.

This boom that the industry is in is unreal. I stopped to pick up somethings at Home Hardware the other day and the fellow that has worked inside at the service counter for years was out loading trucks because they cannot get any help. All the kids that used to work in those jobs are out working on service rigs or swamping on trucks somewhere in the 'patch'.

[cowman]

Emerald: Alberta now has the largest hog plant in Canada. The Olymel plant in Red Deer just added another shift to make it the largest plant. Their capacity is now 90,000 pigs a week with a staff of 2,400 needed! They are currently killing 55,000 with a staff of 1800. They intend to bring in more workers from the Phillipines and El Salvador. They will kill all the hogs in Alberta.
It is little wonder that places like Home Depot, Walmart etc. are having a hard time recruiting staff? In the Red Deer paper there are a ton of jobs advertized, with most of them paying better wages than Home Depot?
The neighbors 16 year old kid got a job at a convention center cleaning up tables for $14.50! Kind of makes you wonder why anyone would go to work in a hell hole like Olymel or Lakeside for $11?

[cowman]

or in a hog barn either for that matter. I wonder what is going to happen if the oil patch ever goes into the doldrums again.