Sustainable Pork Production

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.