Pig farmer Jamie Wyllie has given his reflections on a turbulent 2022 for his sector and the UK’s pig industry has been under increasing pressure in recent years, resulting in a 20% reduction in the national pig herd. The Scottish Farmer caught up with pig farmer Jamie Wyllie to reflect on the past couple of years of challenges, what lies ahead for the wider sector and to hear what changes he has made on his own farm.

The Wyllies runs a pig breeding business supplying stock for other businesses and in any one year, looks to sell over 65,000 pigs.

Like most pig farmers in Scotland, Jamie’s business is still struggling from difficulties which emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the sector’s keystone abattoir at Brechin, among others in the UK, temporarily closed in early 2021, following an outbreak amongst staff.

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Livestock were unable to be killed and processed, which led to a backlog of pigs on farms - quickly going out of spec' – and to compound matters, the abattoir lost its export license to China, which normally buys around 25% of its output.

“The mental stress on farmers and their staff was indescribable at the time,” recalled Jamie. “Farmers had healthy pigs waiting on farm to go, that we had to keep feeding and some people were so desperate they started giving pigs away for free.”

He said that the abattoirs tried to 'catch up' by taking overweight pigs, sometimes for as low as 50p per kg and termed them ‘distressed pigs’.

“Some of our pigs are, thankfully, sent to a bed and breakfast which could take extra pigs, other people used neighbouring farms with empty sheds that weren’t normally used as pig sheds. We probably had three weeks too many pigs on farm, which is bad news for any farmer as it can lead to issues around animals going out of spec', increased feed costs and concerns around animal welfare.”

Commenting on the funding that was made available for farmers, he said it was, of course, welcomed but made little impact on the bottom line of most businesses.

“The Scottish Government announced a series of hardship funds for pig farmers who supplied the Brechin plant, but the last tranche of the support amounted to less than one week’s worth of feed to an average Scottish farm, a drop in the ocean of the support we actually needed to cover costs.”

Turning to more recent challenges around rising inputs and how it has been adding to pressure on pig farmers, he said: “When the war in Ukraine started, it drove up the price of feed by more than 50% and when 70% of your costs as a pig farmer are feed, things went from bad to worse. Having just gone through one hellish time of losing money, we went in to another new time of losing more money.

“There has since been an increase in pig prices across the board, but we are still currently trading at over 20p per kg lower than the price of production. Farms are not viable with the current prices.”

He reported that the price of wheat had come down £100 per tonne in the last six weeks which was welcome news, but added that a lot of farmers had forward fixed their price when it had been higher due to the panic at the time, so may need to be getting £2.50 per kg for their meat, to break even.

“At one point this year, I was trading at 40p per kg below the cost of production – no business can absorb those costs long-term. Pig farms are closing left, right and centre.

"I had a Quality Assurance inspection recently and one of the first questions I was asked was how long my pigs would be on site. I was confused to be asked this question, but it transpired that he wanted to know if I would be shutting down as he was so frequently going on to farms to hear that the final pigs were moving on in the coming weeks.

“Around 20% of the industry has already gone and it is not only the number of farms that are disappearing, it is the number of pigs themselves,” he continued. “Figures recorded by Agrosofts Pig Vision, in November, found that the number of weaners coming forward had dropped by 24% for that month.”

Jamie stressed how disappointing it was not to see more support from government and retailers for domestic pig production, given its valuable contribution to protein intake and its climate credentials.

“We are in a climate emergency and pig production is one of the best carbon efficient proteins available. Pig production can be set up quickly in the grand scheme of things to produce food from a relatively small area.

“Pork, alongside poultry production, keep people’s bellies full and equates to around 80% of meat consumption. If the government is determined to keep food prices low but also be mindful of our climate footprint, then supporting pig producers is a no brainer, but what we are seeing is imports displacing our own pork as it is cheaper for retailers.”

Despite challenges facing the sector, there have been 'wins' in Jamie’s business in 2022, with him switching breeding companies – something he had only done twice in more than 40 years of trading.

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“A highlight for 2022 has been moving to Canadian company, Genesis Genetics and we have already had our first sale of 750 pigs to Ireland, in early December and we have already forward sold 4000 pigs for early next year. Genesis are great to work with, as they have an absolute passion and drive to sell pigs and that has been missing from the sector of late.”

Jamie had also taken steps to lower costs by reducing his sow herd by 350 and moved his management system from a three-week wean, to a four-week wean.

Looking ahead to 2023, he explained that funding support was critical if the government wanted to protect the future of domestic pork production.

“There are pig farmers sitting with £ms of debt, through no fault of their own. We have asked the Scottish Government for money, but there has been no further support offered.

"If support was made available, we would recover far quicker and be able to invest in the future of our businesses, but currently any future profit to be made goes towards paying off our debts, which is simply stagnating the industry,” he concluded.