Sustainable Pork Production
Published: October 22, 2012
By: Dr. Roger Campbell (Pork CRC)
Sustainable pork production is a generic term and has different meanings for pork industries across the world and for producers within an industry.
For all pork producers sustainability means staying in business and as such it is not possible to divorce sustainability from profitability which is determined by the price received for the product and the cost of producing it. Over the last 3-4 years high grain and feed costs have made pork production rather marginal in most major pork producing countries largely because demand hasn’t been sufficiently high enough to cover the increased cost of production and despite predicted increases in the demand for meat protein there has been a general decline in pork production and the numbers of pork producers globally.
It is likely that this situation will in the longer term reverse itself though pork will need to compete with beef and poultry for any increase in demand for meat due to increasing “wealth” in developing countries and increasing population growth. Indeed with the exception of China there is no guarantee that pork production will see any marked growth in the immediate future especially since there are increasing cost pressures being imposed in many industries through environmental and animal welfare regulations and demands. These are on top of increasing power and labour costs being experienced globally. Unless there is a genuine increase in demand the future for pork producing counties may well be based around smaller rather than larger industries and the outcome determined by the ability to compete for growing export markets in developing counties.
For producers and industry in general the challenge is to increase local demand for pork and to continue to improve the efficiency and cost of production in face of challenges associated with new environmental, welfare and other demands. The objectives are not mutually exclusive and the challenge for researchers is to make sure the changes being demanded of pork producers can be made to work to their advantage. Ongoing innovation is also required on ensuring feed efficiency continues to improve and to better utilise feedstuffs other than grains. There is little doubt we will be required to produce more from less.
The current issues associated with sustainability are animal welfare, effluent management and carbon mitigation and alternative animal health strategies to reduce antibiotic use. All are impacting the Australian pork industry which is undergoing considerable change in response to community, government and retail demands especially in the area of sow housing and management. The challenges tend to be common across pork producing countries though the degree of urgency differs and there is little doubt that unless we remain innovative sustainability will be increasingly difficult to achieve. There is also little doubt that we are moving from a low cost low price model to a model based on maximising price over cost and in which retailers, consumers and the community will play a larger role in how pork is produced. The secret will be to demonstrate that pork production has changed in line with community and consumer expectations and to leverage the changes into higher demand and higher prices.
This is a summary of paper presented at World Nutrition Forum 2012, Singapore - October 10th-13th, 2012.
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28 de noviembre de 2012
Hi Tony,
I have been a technical guy who has been into corporate farming and relay so much in chemical agriculture. Even in my personal poultry and swine project I follow the technical guide given to me by feed technicians and works pretty well.
However, as I analyzed the cost and return it seems the system is not sustainable. An additional cost on antibiotics and not so good weather (that will affect the growth of pigs), then economics is not good;
this is because of the cost of production too high.
You mention a system that works for you, can you share it with us?
Thanks in advance and more power.
Jorge Giovanni N. Dela Cruz
Pig Farmer, Tampakan, South Cotabato Philippines
jgnc2484@yahoo.com
20 de noviembre de 2012
I think this article is very well thought out and states the position in Thailand very well. We use probiotics in drinking and wash water, we compost all manures and treat waste water with a series of septic tanks, again treated with probiotic. We have not used antibiotics in over a year and are actively looking at growing alternate feed plants that will grow on marginal land in near drought conditions. Our sows are group housed as part of a batch breeding system.
To me the answer is in reducing internal costs by using on farm sustainable resources where possible and selling by products to cover external costs. However this would be much harder for medium and large farms, we are a very small family farm. For us, it is a matter of integrating as many parts of the farm as possible and eliminating the word waste. We brew our own probiotics and produce rice hull biochar amongst other things.
The bottom line at our level, lots of manual labour tasks. Many things we do are based on the Korean natural farming philosophies. These methods utilise local resources. If the methods could be mechanised to reduce the labour component, then maybe they could be more applicable to larger scale operations.
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24 de octubre de 2012
In Australia the major retailers know as much about the cost of producing pork as some of the more astute farmers. However this is the reality of doing business with them. Couple this with the knowing through contracting and other information exact numbers in the system allows them to maximise profitability. There is no point them paying farmers any more as this will not make more pigs in the short term. They might as well lift retail prices up and dampen supply and take a greater margin when a pig shortage looms. As an industry we need to understand all meat supply chains and costs to give us the information to at least pressure retailers with the knowledge of margins across all categories so we can increase market share through price difference to other meat categories in time of plentiful supply. Then rather than being a straight out loss into the retailer’s bottom line it could be more of investment into the future by increasing consumer demand. Price does still sell.
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