Pig farmers are subject to the ‘pig cycle’, a key element of agricultural economics. It goes something like this: pigs are unsubsidised – the government doesn’t ‘help’ producers by buying surpluses or fixing prices in any other way, for example, so, when there’s not much pork around prices are good – good prices attract people into the industry, and so more pigs become available on the market which means that customers can shop around for the cheapest, which drives pigmeat prices down – lower prices mean that producers make less money from their pigs, and in an industry with very low margins (difference between the cost of producing something and how much you are paid for it) low prices easily force people to sell up – which in turn leads to reduced supply and therefore increasing prices which again attract people back into pigs. Classically this cycle has peaks and troughs every three to five years. Those that can weather the troughs are the farm businesses that will survive long term, and longer term survival means one is more likely to make money out of pigs. There are three ways of achieving this ‘cycle-proof’ business: large numbers; specialist breeding; small-scale marketing or large scale ‘integration’. Let’s consider each in turn.
Pig Farming – How to Make Money From Pigs
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