Will customers pay more for pigs and pork?

English livestock farmers are facing dramatic falls in income as huge rises in animal feed bills feed through the system, according to Defra forecast reported by the Farmers Guardian.

That’s not a surprise to us as animal feed prices have risen steadily in Scotland, too, alongside rises in the price of energy (whether fuel or electricity), straw and fencing.

The Defra forecast suggested there would be a 24 per cent drop in farm incomes for dairy farms, 34 per cent for LFA grazing livestock units, 48 per cent for grazing livestock farms on lowlands and 66 per cent for specialist pig producers.

Pig producers are taking a real kicking at the moment because, alongside the rise in input costs, there’s huge competition from extremely cheap imports while processors and retailers use their muscle to ensure farmers subsidise their profits.

No surprises for us there.

Where I do disagree with the FG is when it reports BPEX as saying 80 per cent of the public would be “prepared to do a little more to help farmers”.

People may say that in focus groups and surveys but our experience on the ground is that while many potential customers will claim to support local production with higher standards, when it comes to handing over their money they will invariably plump for the cheaper alternatives.

It doesn’t matter whether they want pork or weaners to fatten, the majority of customers now expect prices to be lower than they were a year ago. In fact, many expect prices to be lower than they were five years ago and there’s a large element who expect prices to be lower than in the 1980s.

No business, whether large like the 2,000 sow units, or small, like ourselves, is sustainable when input costs are higher than the prices expected by customers.

If customers, whether processors, retailers or individual consumers, don’t pay higher prices to reflect higher input costs then they have to accept a further and inevitable decline in the availability of British pigs and British pork—regardless of how much better it is in terms of quality, welfare standards, environmental standards, farm working conditions or traceability.

Personally, I doubt many customers will accept higher prices and while some will offer verbal support it will be rarely matched by support from their pockets.

Related articles

• Warning over buying pigs as gifts (confused.com)
• Sustainable food only sells if it’s cheap (stoneheadcroft.com)
• What price welfare? (stoneheadcroft.com)