Relationship Building with Foreign Counterparts Key to Success of Pork Producers

Jun 06, 2022

The General Manager of Manitoba Pork suggests building and maintaining relationships with farmers in other countries is one of the most important responsibilities of Canadian agricultural representatives. An article being circulated through Manitoba newspapers and posted to the Manitoba Pork website examines the importance of efforts to strengthen international relations among those involved in farming and the groups that represent them.

Cam Dahl, the General Manager of Manitoba Pork, suggests farmers and their associations can't do enough to foster these relationships.

Clip-Cam Dahl-Manitoba Pork:

Traditionally we think of relationships between countries as the responsibility of governments but it's also the responsibility of farm groups as well and farm leaders like Manitoba Pork Council and other commodity organizations. We have a responsibility to build up those relationships.

Relationships absolutely matter in everything we do and to talk about things like what's a common approach to activist pressure on those that don't like modern agriculture or want to see animal agriculture shut down? How do we talk to consumers about some of those messages that are coming out or misinformation coming out about our industry? We need to be working together on those and the more that we can work together, the more that we can have a common message, the more that we can have a common positive approach to consumers in North American, the more successful we'll be.

That collaboration really starts with getting to know the people on both sides of the border, getting to know our counterparts in other organizations, have our farmers get to understand each other a little bit better. I'm finding that, when we do that, we realize that the issues that producers are facing are the same whether they're raising pigs in Minnesota and Iowa or in Manitoba.

Source : Farmscape

Video: US Soy: Pig growth is impaired by soybean meal displacement in the diet

Eric van Heugten, PhD, professor and swine extension specialist at North Carolina State University, recently spoke at the Iowa Swine Day Pre-Conference Symposium, titled Soybean Meal 360°: Expanding our horizons through discoveries and field-proven feeding strategies for improving pork production. The event was sponsored by Iowa State University and U.S. Soy.

Soybean meal offers pig producers a high-value proposition. It’s a high-quality protein source, providing essential and non-essential amino acids to the pig that are highly digestible and palatable. Studies now show that soybean meal provides higher net energy than current National Research Council (NRC) requirements. Plus, soybean meal offers health benefits such as isoflavones and antioxidants as well as benefits with respiratory diseases such as porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS).

One of several ingredients that compete with the inclusion of soybean meal in pig diets is dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS).

“With DDGS, we typically see more variable responses because of the quality differences depending on which plant it comes from,” said Dr. van Heugten. “At very high levels, we often see a reduction in performance especially with feed intake which can have negative consequences on pig performance, especially in the summer months when feed intake is already low and gaining weight is at a premium to get them to market.”

Over the last few decades, the industry has also seen the increased inclusion of crystalline amino acids in pig diets.

“We started with lysine at about 3 lbs. per ton in the diet, and then we added methionine and threonine to go to 6 to 8 lbs. per ton,” he said. “Now we have tryptophan, isoleucine and valine and can go to 12 to 15 lbs. per ton. All of these, when price competitive, are formulated into the diet and are displacing soybean meal which also removes the potential health benefits that soybean meal provides.”