25 June, 2010
Price of pig feed (sow rolls) five years ago: £185 per tonne.
Price of pig feed today: £278 per tonne.
Price of diesel five years ago: 91.2 pence per litre.
Price of diesel today: £1.22 per litre.
Price customers expected to pay for a 10-week-old piglet five years ago: £35.
Price customers expect to pay for a 10-week-old piglet today: £15-20.
Something doesn’t add up, especially when you consider £35 for a piglet was below the cost of production five years ago.
Yes mate, it does “add up” unfortunately; people want more for less. One of its names is the “Gimme, Gimme” syndrome.
It is at all levels of society too.
People know the price of everything and the value of nothing,they have no idea what it takes to breed and rear quality stock.Just look at last winter,hardship.I would not sell a piglet for that kind of money.It has to be worth all the work (and risk).I see crossbred/halfbred pigs for sale as purebred stock and people see nothing wrong with that either.
Will the TSG status now given to the GOS now warrant a fair price for the young ?
You’re right. We’ve experienced it at the other end of production too, when we sell our pork. People expect to get a cheap deal for rare breed, organically raised pork just because it’s not in the shops. They always seem surprised when we tell them the price – even though we generally end up selling for less than the same sort of product in a supermarket.
You should move to France… Their farmers get load of money to make things nobody wants…
People do want the pigs and pork we produce. We get 4-6 inquiries a week, more at peak times such as early spring. However, most prospective customers believe pigs and pork should be extremely cheap and aren’t prepared to pay much more than a third of the cost of production. The only way we could even begin to deliver prices that low would be to develop an instant pig that could be mass-produced by slave labour in China, then pulled off the shelf and inflated on demand when a customer wanted one.