Give bigger share or there won’t be British pig industry left, NFU Scotland warns retailers

Retailers and processors must deliver a better share of rising pig prices back to producers or risk losing the sector, NFU Scotland has warned on Monday (18).

The organisation has stated that unless prices increase and bigger share is given to pig farmers, there won’t be a British industry left.

In the last five weeks the Standard Pig Price (SPP) has risen by almost 20p per kg, some supermarkets have announced record profits, some feed suppliers have called force majeure on forward bought products and pig farmers are still losing money according to Jamie Wyllie, chair of NFU Scotland’s Pigs Committee.

“Processors and supermarkets have taken the opportunity to make large PR statements about the amount of money that they are putting into their spot portion of the price we are paid but it’s nowhere near enough,” Wyllie said in a statement.

“The Cost of Production (CoP) for a pig right now with today’s feed and electricity prices is around 204p per kg. While I appreciate that the pig price has risen and that this week we saw the largest rise in price I have ever seen, we are still a long way from even covering our costs.

Feed has increased by 60 per cent since February 2021, with 35 per cent of that being directly linked to the “dreadful situation that is occurring in Ukraine”, Wyllie said,a dding that with almost 70 per cent of the cost to produce a pig being feed, this unforeseen increase in feed cost has had a “devastating effect for the pig farmer”.

“I was quite saddened to hear recently of another major retailer announcing record profits whilst an entire sector of the food industry is on its knees. 

“We have long believed that the retailers have been keeping an unfair share of the final sale price and this announcement suggests it is the case. We calculate that year to date; the UK pig farmer is currently only getting around 37 per cent of the final sale price when in recent years it has been up to 42 per cent. This 5 per cent may not sound like very much but it would increase the price paid to the farmer by around 19p per kg. Where did that 19p go?”