Farming: Pig meat price ‘has shot up’ since Brexit

An Austrian piggery.
An Austrian piggery.

Last week I showed some updated Russian piggeries which showed a huge improvement.

Even though pigs require a fundamental way of being farmed, designs do vary a lot.

Austria is a beautiful country and they have quite an efficient way of farming and have some piggeries the likes of which I have never seen anywhere else.

Usually in UK, the inner walls are either insulated panels or plastic with the occasional brick or block walls plastered.

One piggery I saw there was clinical to say the least as all the pen walls and surrounding walls were ceramic tiles.

They looked nice and would be easy to clean but I guess would cost a fortune.

A tiled farrowing house.

A tiled farrowing house.

Nevertheless it was nice to see them but I cannot make my mind up if they would look right here as perhaps they are not very practical as it only needs someone with a barrow to run into them or accidentally knock them and they could break.

What I don’t know is whether or not the walls they are on are insulated, as they could be quite cold.

I suppose most piggeries inside are fairly similar these days as systems have developed but there is still a huge difference in the piggeries themselves in shape and design.

Austria, like Switzerland, is a very clinical country with green hills, green pastures, and fertile valleys.

There are plenty of trees around which all adds to the general picture, so you get a sense of cleanliness everywhere.

Strange how things happen, the poor old pig producer has been losing money for the last 18 months at least and suddenly the price has shot up to around 140p per kilo deadweight as I write this.

Is this the effect of Brexit?

After all with the £ dropping in value, it means importers will have to pay more to obtain the sort of things they need, pig meat being one of them. Had the buyers here played ball and paid a fair price all the time, we would have had certainly enough pork produced here and possibly 60 per cent of bacon but they are always after a quick profit and hang the consequences.

It is difficult to build a relationship with these people as they only look at today,not tomorrow and beyond.

One thing is for sure and if Brexit means no support for agriculture, many farmers will go out of business and I wonder how much your food will cost you then?

If someone desperately needs something and there is no leeway available, then the seller can charge more or less what he likes.

When there is an abundance then the boot is on the other foot. The problem we have had here is that buyers have treated our industry as if the boot was on the other foot. Why do you think so many dairy farms have closed down? It is a bit of rum job when bottled water is more than double the price of milk.

Maybe farmers should look for other non-food enterprises on their holdings and let us all rely on imported food.

Pretend I did not say that!