UK’s pig farmers behind Cambodia in payment league

Matthew Curtis, managing director of ACMC Ltd, based at Beeford, near Driffield, said the farm-gate price in Cambodia, where the company has interests, was £2.47 per kilo deadweight, compared to £1.51 in the UK.

He was speaking after a lot of smaller farmers picketed the Tesco shareholders’ annual meeting to protest at prices which, they said, meant they were losing £10-£15 on every pig produced.

Much of ACMC’s turnover is in breeding stock but Mr Curtis said they too were losing money on ‘baconers’ – pigs for the butcher – because of increases in feed costs which were too big to be covered by any cost savings. Wheat which cost £110 last April was £160 now and had been up to £200 a tonne.

He said: “Pig farmers can’t sustain these losses. If prices don’t increase to a realistic level, they will simply be driven out of business and retailers will have killed the goose that’s laying their golden eggs.”

Cambodia is far below the UK in terms of income per head. Average income in 2010 was 2000 US dollars. The Chinese are about twice as rich, but still poor compared to most Europeans, and Chinese farmers are getting about £2.55 a kilo, said Mr Curtis.

He said: “This makes a mockery of the claims by major retailers that ordinary British people are not in a position to pay more for their pigmeat. It is extremely cheap. For example, retailers price fillet of beef at about £35 per kg compared with just £7 for fillet of pork.”

He said the reason why Cambodian and Chinese buyers paid a more realistic price was “the retailers do not have the same grip that they do in Europe”.

n Derbyshire-based dairy business analyst Ian Potter said in his latest newsletter, this week: “In the ‘European 27’ milk price league table, we lie third from bottom, fractionally ahead of Slovenia and Romania. In March 2011 the EU average milk price was 29.72ppl. And if we exclude the Northern Ireland average price, the GB one would be even lower at 26.33ppl. Such low prices are impossible to explain to farmers in a country which trumpets how valuable and precious its fresh dairy market is.”

He said government agencies could help by paying “fair” prices for their dairy products rather than always taking the cheapest.