Farmscape for January 10, 2007  (Episode 2354)

A University of Minnesota associate professor is encouraging swine producers to evaluate available resources more closely and to better utilize them.

Optimizing production to boost profitability will be among the topics examined next week during the 2007 Banff Pork Seminar.

University of Minnesota Associate Professor Dr. John Deen suggests making the most of available resources requires increasingly complex analytic methods.

Clip-Dr. John Deen-University of Minnesota 

We have to make sure that the different phases of production, the different input suppliers, the different parts of production such as the sow unit, such as the feed mill, such as nursery and grow finish actually have common aims and they understand how their product is related to the product in the immediate previous phase.

An example would be weaning age.

Many producers are increasing their weaning age not because it helps the sow herd be more productive but we found that weaning age improves the productivity of pigs in the nursery and grow-finish barn.

People are surprised about that and it really reflects the fact that we didn't really understand how to optimize the decisions in the sow unit to get the best productivity across the whole system.

So optimizing on that basis is important.

The other optimization is across different requirements.

We have to take into account concerns such as the welfare of animals and the environmental outputs coming out of pig production and we have to combine different requirements into a common model optimizing across the needs of different parts of society.

Dr. Deen stresses it's critical for producers to be aware of their resources and to make the most of them.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

-The Banff Pork Seminar runs from January 16 to 19, 2007.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council