The sale of the Prairie Swine Centre’s research farm to a British swine genetics firm is expected to benefit Saskatchewan’s pork and grain sectors beyond the immediate financial upside.
The hog research agency, affiliated with the University of Saskatchewan, recently announced it would sell the farm at Elstow, about 45 km east of Saskatoon, to JSR Genetics Ltd.
“To see it back in operation with high-quality genetics is a real boost to not only the local area around Elstow, for the ability to sell grain and to have people working at the barn, but it’s also a really good psychological boost for the industry, to know that other outside companies see that there is some future in the pork industry in Saskatchewan,” producer services manager Harvey Wagner of Sask Pork said Tuesday on the program Farmscape.
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But Wagner also noted that JSR’s investment in the area will show Saskatchewan to be a “really good place to house high-quality genetics, because of our biosecurity.”
The biosecurity afforded by the greater distance between barns makes the province a “really good repository” for genetic stock that will be available for movement all over the world, he said.
To have another major international company locate in the province reaffirms Saskatchewan’s advantages for raising hogs, Wagner said on the program, which is sponsored by Sask Pork and the Manitoba Pork Council.
The JSR deal also allows the hog industry to continue to access the Pork Interpretive Gallery, the science centre-like education facility in the attic space of the barn.
