PIGS - Serious decline in pig numbers

By Matt Dempsey

We have now lost 8,000 out of our national herd of 150,000 sows. As the traumas in the pig sector continue unsustainable losses are building up. It is not only in Ireland. Even in Denmark, with much of its pig industry situated on grain farms and dependent on to a large extent on family labour, we see a threatened boycott of their large co-op, Tulip is prices are not raised.

On Tuesday of this week, the IFA held a meeting that reviewed where the industry is, the prospects and what needs to be done.

The backdrop of these discussions was an excellent Teagasc document which asked the fundamental question as to whether or not there was a national will to have a vibrant pig industry.The industry is the third largest contributor to agricultural output after milk and beef, it employs at least 7,000 people but Teagasc is correct, it has a negative public image in terms of environmental impact.

This image needs to be corrected.

Having lost our beet industry, we need a regional spread of employment and commercial farming activity. The Teagasc blueprint lays out the parameters around on which a national blueprint for the survival and development of the sector can be built. There are a number of key conditions that need to be met.

1. Consistency across all local authorities in terms of planning permission
2. The anomalies of double counting under the Nitrates regulations affects both cattle farmers and pig farmers and while some progress has been made in how farmers with less than 170kg of Org N can import pig manure, we need a more coherent system in an era of very expensive fertilizer that recognises the part that chemical nitrogen can be replaced by pig manure, with benefits to both the individual and the environment.

At producer level, Teagasc contends that Irish technical efficiency has not improved over the last 10 years - this demands clarity and remedial action.

There is clearly not enough liaison between slaughterers, producers and the secondary processors.

The presence of the secondary processors, using a large proportion of imported product sold to Ireland often to relieve a glutted home market elsewhere, is having a hugely negative effect. The fact that most of this product is inadequately labelled adds to pressures on the more bona fide operators.

This week, Minister Mary Coughlan has written to the Commissioner in an attempt to set a sensible EU labelling policy. But the Department of Agriculture is going to have to play a bigger role. Ultimately it sets the policy guidelines for the development of the industry.

The Malone Report on sheep at least set the framework for action even if the essential financial underpinning disappeared - temporarily,we hope. The same approach is needed for pigs.