29: A trip to the Baynesfield Estate in South Africa with Myles van Deventer

Hello there.  This is Dr. Casey Bradley and you’re listening to The Real P3 podcast, a podcast dedicated to the real pork producers around the world. I hope you enjoy.

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On this week’s episode, we’re gonna be visiting South Africa and speaking to the manager of Baynesfield Estates, Myles Van Deventer. And we’re going to be discussing some of the challenges he faces there in his mixed crop swine and cattle operation. They even grow avocadoes! We’re gonna talk about mycotoxin issues they’ve had in their corn crop over the years, how they’ve grown fast and how they use research to make economic decisions for their operation. So, stay tuned.

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[00:51]

Casey: Hello Myles. How are you doing today?

Myles: I’m fine, thank you, Casey.

C: Would you mind telling our audience about yourself and your operation in South Africa (SA)?

M: Casey, I’m the MD for an operation called Baynesfield Estate in SA. It’s a diversified farming operation. We have 2,200 sow farrow-to-finish operation and then, together with a cattle operation, feed mill and maize operation that provides the maize component to that feed mill for the pigs. And also, avocadoes – we produce avocadoes for the export and local markets, too. So, we’re quite diversified, but piggery operation is probably the mainstay of our business.

C: Wonderful! So it’s a farrow-to-finish?

M: Yep.

C: And so, kinda walk us through what I guess a normal production’s parameters look like for you. Do you have any production targets or anything like that in your genetics?

M: We try to get to… we are at about 28-29 pigs sold per sow per year. That’s what we’re aiming for. Over the last few years, we’ve pushed our weights drastically. So, initially… I’ve been with this operation for close on 16 years now, and I can tell you what 16 years ago, the average weights for this operation and probably for most of the SAn producers was in the 78’s around there, 78kgs per pig market, and that’s the dressed weight. And now we’re on the 86-87, 88 even the 90 kgs. So big emphasis on pushing weights and growing our pigs to bigger weights. That’s been a big push for us. And that’s given us more kgs per sow marketed, which is the big driver for us at the moment.

C: So, you’re also in a unique situation. You just put in your own research facility. Was that kinda in regards to driving up those weights and becoming more efficient?

M: Yeah, [03:00] it was a big driver for that. First of all, the opportunity came out when…. There’s a little story to be told here, but when we expanded our operation a decade ago, we underestimated the growth that we would experience in terms of the improvements that we would get. In terms of piglets and wean per sow, pigs weaned per sow. And also, we underestimated the move in grain and pigs to heavier market weights. So, what we found out was that we were running out of grower space, that we were overstocked in the end. So, we ended up having to make the decision – the numbers made sense for us – to increase our grower space. So, we ended up putting up another grower unit to accommodate the more pigs that we were getting, but also the larger pigs that we were running. And when that opportunity arose and laid out that footprint, we took the opportunity to lay out one of those houses to allow us to do some nutritional research. It was, I suppose, our golden opportunity to do that. The feeling there was that there was so much work that we could do – and I’d like to use the word practical – some practical work that we could do in the form of nutrition. We do separate sex feeding, but there were certainly unanswered questions that we wanted to dive into. We have a nutritionist that we work with, and we have some quite in-depth discussions on some of the science of the nutrition and the opportunity really presented itself for us to be able to answer some of those questions by putting up this unit. It was a – I would say – once in a lifetime opportunity to cut it out. So, we have this unit, and if people want research done, we take on customers and they can pay for that research to be done, and if there are no customers available, then we will put on a research project that will benefit our sows and to answer some of the questions, and we’ve had some excellent information that has come through to us already.

C: Well, I thought it was very interesting when you said number of pigs sold per sow. So, a lot of us focus on the sow side with PSY – so number of weaned pigs per sow per year – and you’re focusing more on end of market numbers and so kind of walk me through that and the decision making from the sow farm and then you’re transitioning of how you get that mindset in with your labor force – that it’s not about weaned pigs, but more about basically meat.

M: Yeah, at the end of the day, the productive unit is the sow, you know what I mean, and we try to maximize the efficiency out of that sow. So, if you’re marketing at 28 pigs per sow per year and they’re all dressing at an average of 88 kgs, you’ll be marketing [06:00] 2,400 kgs per sow per year. You know what I mean? So, there’s interesting maths to that. And obviously, big of that are the number of piglets weaned per sow. Then the growth of those pigs. It’s just the way we wanna operate is pushing for the number of kgs sold per sow. I don’t quite know if the merits of your system are where maybe you guys have pushed the piglets weaned. Obviously, that’s a big number for us, too, we always try to maximize that, too, but at the end of the day it’s the realization that it’s the dressed weight at the end of the day sold per sow.

C: Well, a lot of times I find that in production no matter where we are in the world – that it’s very silo’d. So, we have our sow farms pushing the number of pigs out the doors. Then we have our nurseries or wean-to-finish, and depending on different objectives, different things go and it’s not very holistic of that mindset that when we’re managing pigs it’s about pounds of meat on the rail. And that’s what we get paid on.

M: I think probably on our side we could probably be a bit better setting the targets for the breeding unit vs the growing unit as we would call it. But we’ve always just seen it as one operation. At the end of the day is kgs out per sow, at the end of the day. I know probably in some countries, things are probably a little bit more separated and there’ll be performance targets for the breeding unit, yes, we do have that. But for us it’s one integrated unit and it’s the end product at the end of the day that counts.

C: So, what are some of the challenges that you’ve faced in the last few years in pork production? Obviously, expansion, running out of pig space; that sounds very familiar for a lot of producers. What else has been keeping you up at night?

M: Well. I think the one that, you know, we produce our own maize. And we have a [08:00] feed mill. And that’s been really good for us. Mycotoxins in maize is a challenge for us. I have a lot of friends that are also involved in maize production, and I think if you produce maize to sell or maize to produce for – to use in other animal species – it’s quite difficult to produce maize for pig production, because we all know that pigs are quite sensitive to mycotoxins. And this is something we’re still trying to get grips to. Our challenge on Baynesfield Estate is we just have enough – we need to improve our yield per hectare of maize, because we just produce enough to be self-sufficient on maize. Maize in our operation accounts for about 68% of the raw materials used. Until we actually get that yield up, we use all the land for maize production. And from an agronomic perspective, that’s not ideal. We should really be having a rotation of soya beans, and we’re working towards that. Our yields are improving and we’ve been very surprised this year and excited about some of the performance improvements that we’ve had there. But the issue with mycotoxins comes a lot – is really a multi-factorial problem, and we’re attacking it on two fronts. One is to implement some kind of tillage. Previously, we were minimum tillage with the absolute minimum amount of tillage and now we are doing some, not as conventionally tilled as in the bad old days in convents, but we’re doing some more tillage to try and make up for the lack of our rotation, and we’re also trying to get the maize into the silos as quickly as possible. We used to have a bit of a delayed harvest, which helped us with a bit of storage capacity, because while you’re harvesting the pigs are eating the food. So now we are in a push to try and get the maize into the silos as quickly as possible. Because we clearly see [10:00] a pattern: if you have any unseasonal winter rainfall, if you have a rainfall event, the mycotoxins kick in there. So, we monitor the situation more than we have ever done, and every field of maize that comes in, we test for mycotoxins. And we can clearly see a pattern there of zero mycotoxins, zero mycotoxins, zero mycotoxins, and then you come to the point in the harvest where it turns. And it’s invariably after some kind of rainfall event. So, the trick for us is to try and get the maize into the silos as quickly as possible. So, we’re in a big drive to try and drop that problem; we use to harvest over a 4 month period, to bring that down to 3 months and to try and reduce our risk there. And then over time obviously you’d bring in a rotation of soya beans. But we would… that’s more of a medium challenge for us. So, mycotoxins is an issue for us and hopefully we’re getting into goods to that.

C: Well, curious what types of mycotoxins that you face in your system?

M: We have the full package. Some of the names I still can’t get to pronounce properly.

[laughter]

C: So, it’s a multi-factorial problem, which causes more problems than just the one.

M: Yeah. Definitely. So, you know, we’re much smarter with that. Maize that comes in with higher mycotoxins, minerals, are put in particular silos and then that maize is treated with mycotoxin binders. In the past, we would have just used binders throughout. So, and we have some nice test kits, too. So, we’re much more clearer now. But still mycotoxins is an issue for us. So, we’ve seen over the last couple of years, that if you don’t have a handle, then you can really suffer some big production losses in performance of your finishing pigs. And then even in your breeding unit, too. Mycotoxins is a issue for us and recently, we’ve had some other challenges, too. We’ve had some in the area that we operate in, [12:00] we’ve had some unrest – social unrest – in one particular area in SA, which is the area that we happen to be, and the abattoir to which we market our pigs was damaged and vandalized. So that ended up us not being able to market our pigs at that abattoir for a period of about 3 weeks and that was a very steep learning curve for us, too, so we had to make plans there and you really get to learn about risk then, and how to mitigate it. And also what to do in scenarios like that. So that’s hopefully something we are not going to repeat again, but I’ve got the t-shirt on that one.

C: Yeah. So, it’s interesting, last week I was at the Swine Nutrition conference in Ames, and discussions around slowing pigs down. We had to do that as well here in the US because of Covid and plants being shut down as well. The biggest thing that they mentioned from our standpoint was it was a good learning exercise and hopefully we won’t forget it, because in case ASF hits our borders, we may have to have at least some sections of the US if not all, hold pigs, because we can’t slaughter or, you know, market those pigs. So, we may have to revisit that as well. What are some of the challenges you face? Because what I heard from your nutritionist as well is not only couldn’t you market the pigs, you were basically feeding corn and sunflower meal.

M: Yeah. That was just in an effort to… One of the challenges, too, with that unrest, is your supply of some of your raw materials can’t get through. So, although we’re producing 68% of the feed, being the maize, we have to bring in the sunflower oil keg, the soya oil keg, full fat soya and the wheat bran, and we weren’t able to get the soya oil keg, which is honestly a big driver in the whole ration. So that made that for – less than a [14:00] week – we had no soya oil keg in our diets. So that was quite a challenge, too. So again, you have to start thinking out the box on what you need to do and also in how you address situations like this going forward. And it’s clear to us that we need to be able to hold more stocks of some of these raw materials for events like this. Sometimes, some of the basic stuff, too, of fuel, getting fuel deliveries, too. Because fuel deliveries are also restricted. And this unrest only lasted for about a week, but it was able to really disrupt social… I mean supply chains, which was quite a wake up call for us, too.

You had mentioned also about ASF in America, too. That’s obviously also something that’s really on our minds at the moment. I mean ASF in SA is becoming more of a widespread issue. In SA, it’s been something that used to be confined generally to a certain part of SA, the far northern areas of SA, and that has gradually changed. We find that it is becoming much more widespread amongst the small-holder population of pigs. Where a lot of small-scale farmers keep pigs and from a subsistence point of view, and it’s becoming a real problem. We’re picking up many cases of ASF in these herds and recently, we’ve also had two big commercial units also come down with ASF. Nothing after that, touch wood, but it is problematic. It is a big concern for all of us. Everyone’s really hot on biosecurity at the moment.

C: So, what are some of the biosecurity things that you have in place in your system?

M: It’s all the standard stuff that we have. So, we have all our units are fenced off and [16:00] have proper fencing. There’s concrete underneath the fencing so that things like wild boars or warthogs can’t tunnel underneath or burrow underneath the fences. We have shower facilities where people obviously have to shower into the facility, change your clothes, on-site laundry, canteens on site. No people coming onto side that have been anywhere near pigs for the last 3 days. I would think those are kind of standard throughout. I’m not sure in America, but they’re kind of standard here in SA. And then we do our big one for us is that we produce our own feed, so we don’t have a feed truck that’s been to other units that’s driving around depositing food. I think that’s a really big one. And then the weak link is always that trip to the abattoir. You know what I mean, to take your pigs? So, there’s a lot of emphasis there to make sure we don’t bring anything back there. And making sure that that truck is cleaned properly there at the slaughterhouse and then when it’s returned, it’s disinfected correctly, too. I don’t think you can be bio-secure enough. There’s also a big push from our side to get our staff to embrace the biosecurity. I think so many times you get this – we were just talking about it this morning – people ticking boxes, you know what I mean. Yes, I do this, yes, I do this, but not really living it. And the owner who doesn’t shower in and walks through the unit, but the staff are expected to shower until perfect. So, we really push that about to get the whole culture right, so people realize that. So now everyone’s interested to make sure that this unit does not come down with some notifiable disease. We push that a lot. There’s another point I wanted to make about the diseases, too, is yeah, also our feed mill. Recently we’ve made use of services for people to come and do assessments of us to give us another point of view to make sure, and they pointed out that our feed mill is an area of concern. I think that’s something we all kind of forget to… you know, we take in our feed, we’re pumping it into the piggery, but the biosecurity in our feed mill is maybe not as sharp as in our piggeries, too. So that’s an area that we’re working on now, too, is to make sure we have better biosecurity in our feed mill. So that’s not a route of infection to our piggery.

C: Some really good points.

[18:30]

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We wanna take this break to thank our sponsors, The Sunswine Group, NutraSign, Swine Nutrition Management and Pig Progress.  But we also wanted to remind you of our new Facebook group, the Global Swine Professionals.  We’re gonna be doing something fun; some live interviews, some Q&A and we just wanna hear from our audience, so that’s a great place for you to take the time, leave us a comment, tell us what you wanna hear, or volunteer to be on our show, because we’re always looking for those awesome pork producers around the world.  Well, that’s all I had, so let’s get back to that appisode now.

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[19:07]

C: I’m gonna jump back into some of this applied research. We talked about – in the past – formulating diets and the applied research and kind of the things that interest you about not necessarily about biological response or optimized growth, but more about that economics to that growth. Explain how you work through that, and then decide on some of these research trials that you have interest in.

M: So, it’s something that I’m really, really interested in, together with nutritionist Willem Steyn, we want to try and tackle this. So, I think for historically, people have formulated diets trying to maximize the biological performance of the pig, so to get the best weights for instance, to maximize the weights. And I think there’s been some lovely research done in broiler nutrition where people are now trying to optimize the diet based on economic optimization of the diet. So not necessarily – let me get this worded right – it’s the economic optimization of diets, not the biological optimization of diets. So, for instance, you’re not feeding the pigs to get to their optimum weight, you’re feeding the pigs that you make the most money per kg of weight produced. And that would depend on your two biggest drivers would probably be the market price for your pigs and the cost of your feed, which invariably draws down to the protein price, which invariably comes down to let’s just say soya oil keg price. So, if you take those two variables and you put them into various models, there are times when for instance, the pork price might be very high, and the soya oil keg price might be very low, where it pays you to feed in very expensive ration because you will get a return on your investment. And the inverse would be true, too, where it pays you to feed a lower density diet, a poorer diet, when the market isn’t good, the pork price isn’t good, and the protein prices are very high – the raw material prices. And you are getting very low carcass weights, but your margin over feed cost will be much better. So, it’s about optimizing the economics of your pork operation as opposed to the performance of your pigs.

And I mean, we’re all so inclined, myself included, to look at the weights every week and say “what the hell’s going on, why have the weights come down,” etc… but it’s really at the end of the day it’s the margin over the feed costs. And I think there’s so much to be looked into exactly when you can change that ration, you know what I mean, and what phase you can change it and what view you’re gonna have. How many weeks or how many months are you thinking that the pork [22:00] price would be down for? And at what phase you could actually drop those rations. And what different it would make. I think a classical case is like… I mean a couple of years ago, we had listeriosis crisis in SA and the pork price plummeted. Now a view there would have bene this is going to be for two months or 3 months. That makes sense for me to cheapen my phase 4 ration and drop the price of that ration. Now in that I wouldn’t affect the other pigs that are still coming through the system. I think there’s so much more that we can play with in strategically forming the diets. To take advantage of the market price of the pork and the protein price of the feed. As opposed to just setting the ration and saying I want an 88kg carcass come whatever.

In Brazil, some of the broiler work that they’ve done, they’ve even if guys that are selling live broilers vs broilers that go to processing plants, they’ve picked up differences there on when people should optimize their diets and whether they should drop protein or not. I think it’s a really…. I think it’s something we’re all going to move towards eventually and we’re going to be much more strategic in how we formulate our diets.

C: In research, besides answering a hypothesis and determining maybe your ideal protein or lysine ratio, what else have you learned having a research facility?

M: Well, as a very basic thing, for instance, when people come and do research at our unit, the control is invariably our standard regime. Ok, so, every research thing that goes through, we get really good data on our own standard regime for the different seasons. On ADG’s feed conversion rate, and that’s all accurate stuff, you know what I mean? Exactive [24:00] for boars, for gilts, so that’s been very useful for us. Our focus to date has been trying to use the opportunity to see how we can optimize diets. So, we haven’t really done anything else. But we’re quite interested in also playing around with some of the vitamins and minerals, too, because I think that there’s – I think I’ve mentioned to you previously, there’s quite a range in recommendations there, too. And I think there’s some money on the table there to be had in terms of what the ideal is, in terms of what you could use there.

C: Definitely. So, you’re a full cycle producer. Very similar to what I grew up in. Crops, pigs and then avocadoes and beef as well. There’s a lot of push for sustainability and carbon credits and – I haven’t prepared you for this question, but – I’m curious on how your system or your mindset is going to be able to balance that sustainability approach where our sustainability approach is really what you talked about least cost of gain. Have you had any pressure in SA around the environment? And how do you see that coming into your decision making in the future?

M: Well, with being an avocado producer and a lot of the avocadoes being export, we have a lot of that in terms of export standards, and global accreditation, etc. And you have big retailers from Europe like Tescoes and Morrisons etc coming out and asking all the very difficult questions. So, we’re probably a little more in tune with that kind of stuff. Also in SA, there’s quite a bit of legislation from an environmental point of view if someone wants to start a piggery to get environmental authorization. And I think ours are becoming much more aware of that at the moment, too. To put up a piggery now, you need to jump through quite a few hurdles, to make sure, and particularly for what’s going to happen with [26:00] the piggery wastewater. Our point of view, we’re very fortunate in that we have about 14-1500 hectares of maize lands, and we have ample area for us to distribute that piggery wastewater. And we go out of our way to make sure that that is balance properly and spread out properly and we’re doing soil corrections every year to make sure that we don’t pick up any imbalances. So, it’s very clear to me that there is a big push for us to all be sustainable and I think in some production enterprises, like avocadoes, are way ahead of everybody else. But the rest are also going to have to catch up, because ultimately the consumer, forced upon us by the retailer, is going to start asking those questions about the water, the wastewater, etc. Where we can, we will definitely try to adopt more environmentally friendly practices. We see that here in SA in terms of crate-friendly, sow crate-friendly. I’m not too sure where you guys in America sit with that, but there was a big push at one stage to move gestation crates and to be what they call sow-crate friendly, and in fact in a few months’ time, we’ll be completely sow-crate friendly, so crated sows only in farrowing crates. For us, it makes sense to be more sustainable, and to move along that path as opposed to us being forced into that situation in the years to come. Because we feel that’s invariably what’s going to happen.

C: Well, awesome. And it’s interesting that being an avocado producer’s prepared you to be a better pork producer.

M: Yeah, most definitely.

C: So, before we go, this is the time that I give my guests an opportunity to ask me a question. I usually say just about everything, [28:00] but you know, there may be some limits. So, do you have any questions for me before we go?

M: Currently in the States at the moment, what is the biggest challenge to pork producers?

C: Well, I would say the majority of producers are facing a labor shortage. That would be a resounding echo going on around the industry that we’re short on labor. And then I think you take that labor shortage and what I see as a challenge, mortality: either sow mortality or piglet mortality. And I think that those two kind of go hand in hand. So, you know, like I said, sow farms focus on pigs out the door, then we get to nursery and if you’re in a nursery system vs wean-to-finish, pigs out the door. And I think we all need to come together and see how we can create a system that it’s pigs to the slaughterhouse and meat on the rail. And with labor shortages, how we’re going to adapt technology to overcome that. Lots of conversations around that. I don’t think we have any great tools yet that’s gonna solve our labor issues. Everybody keeps saying is we’re just gonna redirect our labor, and maybe our mindset needs to change of how we look at mortality and how we look at labor savings as well.

M: That would be such a foreign concept to us, shortage of labor in SA. It’s just quite amazing how the sentiment of producers in different parts of the world can have such different issues to tackle. Yeah.

C: So how many people are you runnin’ per sow? A guess.

M: You caught me off guard there.

C: Yeah. [chuckle] I was just curious for the audience to know. If you don’t have a labor shortage, how many people per sow do you run in SA?

M: Let me work this out. I’ll have to work it out for you quickly. So, It’s 61 sows per person.

C: Wow! And is that just in the farrowing house? [30:00] Or is that through the…

M: That’s for the whole unit. So basically that’s 2,200 sows, and that’s per sow. So, it’s 61 sows per person, but that includes all the followers and the finishers and everything.

C: That’s still amazing, because on a sow farm, we’re running maybe 300 sows per person.

M: Yeah.

C: And then, you know, you’d have 1-2 people nursery, 1-2 people finisher. Depending on how it’s set up right, contract growers and things.

M: Yeah.

C: So, very interesting.

M: Our cost of labor would be considerably cheaper than in the States, but that’s also changing, you know what I mean. Cost of labor is going up. We’re certainly nowhere near to where you guys are in the States, but also labor legislation is becoming more – for want of a better word – restricted. And people are more inclined to employ less people and to automate or mechanize as much as possible these days. Without having all the issues to deal with from a legislative point of view, it’s very difficult to change your work number, your staff numbers. Form what I gather from the States, it’s much easier for you to let people go in the States than it is here in SA. Once you’ve employed someone permanently, it’s quite difficult to release someone over here. So, you’ve gotta be really confident that when you take on someone here in SA, that you’re going to have a job for that person for a long time. That’s becoming a bit of a turn off for many people in terms of employment, which doesn’t really help the employment issue, the unemployment issue that we have in SA.

C: So, do you think that policy breeds more loyal employees for SA? How long is your longest tenure in your system?

M: I don’t know. I think in SA there is, because of the political past that we’ve [32:00], I think generally employers and employees have generally not set around the same table. There’s been quite a strong trade union movement that was aligned with the liberation movement. That’s all changing at the moment, the economy’s not so great. So, the trade unions are probably not as strong as they have been in the past, and things are certainly changing. But people are certainly much more conscious and appreciative of a permanent job these days. We have a very high unemployment rate here in SA, and we have great staff, you know what I mean, we have good staff that have been here for many years. And if you have skilled staff, you do your best to look after them, because they’re an absolute asset to your operation. We’re very fortunate to have some really great people working for us at the moment.

C: Well, incredible. Any other questions? We’ve got a little bit more time.

M: ASF. I’m interested to… you know, we were having a conversation today with some other guys, and the spirit of ASF throughout the world and whether we all shouldn’t be changing our mindset about ASF – as opposed to is it something that we should be learning to live with or do we think we’re going to cull this out and move on. Are we going to put this to bed? Because it doesn’t appear to be the way that we think it’s going.

C: That’s a really good question. I’ve never thought of it that way. You know the US and Canada’s desperately holding onto the fact that we’re ASF-free. We know if, for instance, if it jumps from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico, well, Puerto Rico’s considered a territory of the US, so that makes us ASF-positive. And listening to some producers, we are not regionalized, we don’t have that regionalization yet, similar to like the EU and [34:00] what Germany did and was able to segregate off part of Germany and move their pigs in the clean part. So, I think that’s a good question. ASF’s been around a long time, especially on the continent of Africa – it seems to be not a pandemic, we’re gonna call it an endemic, so something you guys have faced on that continent a lot longer than we have. But I do know if it’s like a lot of things, we can take pseudo-rabies as an example in the US, we eradicated that very easily. I’ve heard that’s kinda poppin’ up a little bit in China through ASF issues of breeding just anything that walks and bringing in finisher gilts, so some of those diseases they didn’t really have before have come back, as they’ve tried to eradicate ASF. I would think, you know, we’ve tried to eradicate PRRS but we’re not successful, so I am concerned the fact if ASF hits our shores, we have such a wild pig population, we have a lot of what we call 4H animals – show animals – and then we have a lot of people who do what we call backyard, hobby farming, smaller retail for the farmers’ market and things that are outdoors, don’t have the same level of biosecurity. So I am scared if it does get in here, there will be billions of dollars lost, producers going out of business, but maybe your right approach is that maybe we don’t, but the problem is I think why we look at it as ASF positive is because we know it can be transported in the meat, so if the meat gets in the wrong hands, and gets fed to pigs, it can cause more economic loss and hard loss. So, it’s not a disease that it sounds like I’d want to manage from a mortality issue and other stuff either, so…

M: Yeah, I think quite a few people are talking on this side and asking the questions. All the small scale guys that are operating, they’ve kind of learned to work around the ASF. You have some mortality and move on type of [36:00] thing. I think the old approach of culling out everything and quarantining and starting again, you know what I mean, it would be quite interesting to see if that model is still going to work. Cause clearly it hasn’t worked. I mean it continues to spread throughout the world.

C: Yeah. So, some types of questions that we’ll have as a global pork industry.

M: Tricky. Not that there’s not enough challenges in the pork industry to face, but… yeah

[laughter]

C: For every problem and challenge, there’s always opportunity for someone. But maybe not everyone.

M: Yeah. So, we have ASF and the ultra guys have the avian influenza. I think that’s way more vicious than ASF, so… We should be grateful.

C: And not to mention that I don’t think we can handle a flu, avian flu outbreak, on top of Covid at the moment. But thank you, Myles. It was great catching up with you and we wish you all the best.

M: Thank you, Casey, it was loving chatting with you. Cheerio.

[37:09]

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