The president of the Weyburn Ag Society says the Livestock Farm Update was a success, although that does not come as a surprise to a senior-level manager at Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food, who predicts expansion in livestock production across the province.

The Livestock Farm Update, a first for Weyburn, was held at the Elks Hall on Thursday with roughly 75 producers attending.

"It was a broad mix, mostly mixed-farmers with cow-calf operations," said Don Payak of the crowd. "There's not a lot of straight ranchers or large feedlots in the area, it's mostly people with 50 to 100 head."

Payak, who also chaired the update committee, said he found Stan Jeeves' talk on contracting feeder cattle to be interesting.

"It's simply risk-insurance. If you have 400 head you might contract out half and lock in a price one-half is a good ratio," he said.

A combination of factors - depressed grain prices, the loss of the Crow Rate and marginal lands in the area - have all brought beef back to the forefront of many producers business decisions.

Payak was highly interested in new programs being introduced under the auspices of Canadian Cattlemen's Association (CCA).

"They're setting up a system where every animal that goes off the farm will be tagged and identified to the producer," said Payak, "It's only for quality control and it's supposed to be introduced close to the end of the year 2000."

Other areas of note within the update include changing the places where producers brand and inoculate their cattle.

The idea is to "move the sites around and up to the neck instead of the rump so you don't damage high-quality cuts of beef," said Payak.

Ken Schmidt, manager livestock development section with sustainable production for Sask. Ag and Food, said the main purpose of the national identification program centres around food safety, "which is huge in consumers' minds today. with the recent BSE or mad-cow disease in Britain, the beef industry realizes how important it is that we're producing a safe and wholesome product.

"One of the ways we can guarantee quality is to have a system in place so we can do tracebacks."

Sask Ag. and Food will assist in the technical transfers of information on behalf of the CCA.

"If we have a disease traceback, that's when the Canadian Food Inspection Agency would get involved and go to the CCA and say we have this problem and so we need to do the necessary trace," said Schmidt. The program's enforcement arm will be the Canadian Cattlemen's Identification Agency, coming into effect Dec. 31, 2000.

The quality-assurance program is another initiative of the CCA which concerns "management and treatment in terms of antibiotics treatment to ensure that people are doing responsible production and creating a high-quality safe product, and the emphasis is on producing a safe high-quality product for the consumer," said Schmidt. "Part of it is that cattle are injected in the right place, instead of the hind end you move to the shoulder; it's an ongoing extension-awareness program."

Part of the problem of increasing cattle production in the province has been a lack of capital but Schmidt says initiative may be forthcoming to create investment funds with a tax-break component which would encourage more investment in the livestock industry. At the same time, Schmidt is mindful of over production.

"The price is really good, really high but the major driving force in people diversifying into livestock is the really low grain prices and high input prices; to try to add value to their grain."

Grain farmers on marginal land can't make it anymore, said Schmidt, so they are now considering diversification into livestock.

Currently, there are close to one million cattle in Saskatchewan, with the ceiling for provincial production of cattle subjectively thought to be between 1.5 and two million head.

But while the price for cattle is high, Schmidt adds the current price can act as a disincentive for some producers wanting to get into cattle production.

"The price of breeding females is high which will temper the rate of growth I have every confidence we will see more diversification into livestock in this province, not only cattle; that's the direction we have to go."