Meet the farmer who started out with no farm

Pat O'Connor farms a 280 sow integrated unit selling 150 pigs a week to Stauntons Meats in Timoleague, Co Cork.

“There is myself and one full time employee working on the farm and I get some help from family members occasionally,” O’Connor explained.

“I'm not from a farming background directly but I always enjoyed working around beef and dairy cattle and contemplated getting involved but I could see they were hard enterprises to set up with no land,” he added.

Unpopular decision

O’Connor’s entry into farming came at a time when the Celtic Tiger was beginning to roar so it was seen as something as an unusual decision.

“When I started in Rockwell in 1997, the economy was starting to turn a corner and agricultural college was an unpopular option.

“There were a lot of farmers’ children not going to agricultural college so many were wondering why in the name of god is a non farmer going to agricultural college. But it's what I wanted to do from an early age and there was nothing else I was going to do so I wanted to make it work. I saw pigs as the easiest way to get into agriculture,” he said

After agricultural college, O’Connor cut his teeth through work experience before an opportunity arose to buy his own pig unit.

“I did a few summers work experience on a pig unit and I enjoyed it. I then proceeded onto agricultural college in Rockwell and on to the pig management in Athenry.

“I spent one year working in Moorepark and the opportunity to buy this unit in Tower,County Cork came up. I'm from Croom in Limerick so it was an adjustment moving to a new area. I joined the local Macra and GAA club so this helped getting to know people locally,” O’Connor said.

O’Connor bought the unit with assistance from his parents. It required considerable investment but the unit is now functioning and modern.

“When I started it wasn't in the best condition but I was fortunate enough that the farrowing and first stage weaner parts of the units were in fairly reasonable order. The rest of the unit wasn't invested in for years. Any money that was made on the farm was invested back into it. Today I'm very proud of a modern unit, it took 10 years of very hard work and little reward at times but if you want to succeed you have to make sacrifices,” he explained.

Breeding

After being hit by the highly contagious blue ear disease a number of years back, the herd, which breeds its own replacements, has “turned the corner” according to O’Connor and is functioning well. Bio-security and disease prevention is central to O’Connor’s management.

“Health is good on the farm at the moment which is all important in pig production. There are a lot of vaccinations to be done to keep the herd healthy, so as a result there significant amount in medical and health care expenses each year.

“What I enjoy about farming is you're your own boss but the downside is when you make a decision and it doesn't work out you have to deal with the consequences. I really enjoy the challenges and every year you're trying to improve production and the farm,” he said.

Depressed market

The pig sector is currently enduring one of the worst downturns in living memory. The closure of the Russia market to European imports as well as a reduction in demand from the Chinese market and an over production in Europe has led to a collapse in domestic pig prices here.

Prices have fallen from almost €1.90/kg in the summer of 2014 to under €1.40/kg at present.

“Currently the market is saturated but looking to the future I would be quite optimistic if we can get our markets right. We need to secure markets before we look to expand further. There is no point in producing pigmeat to put into private aid storage as is the case at present. At the moment pig prices across Europe are under pressure partly due to the Russian sanctions something which is outside of farmers control,” he said.

The future

O’Connor believes that the land mobility service and farm partnerships now offer more routes to farming for those interested.

“There's always an opportunity so if you want to do it just go for it but be prepared to work hard,” O’Connor added.