Page 14 - Australian Pork Newspaper

Letters to the Editor Letters to the Editor
It is the responsibility of those making submissions to ensure the correctness of their claims and statements. The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the publisher.
n
n
I AM writing to express my concerns, as I feel those at Australia Pork Limited are far off the mark when it comes to understanding what goes on in the piggery.
My farm of 600 sows has been running for 38 years now.
In the end, we sold 200 of our cows, which was another $300,000, just to stay in pigs.
Since February 2018, I have done eight budgets for our bank .
tions and feed.
My feed for the past few
for wheat in that period, $325 for lupins and $250 for barley.
changed to using DSM, and my minerals and vi- tamins come from NSW, and all my creep feed from Lienerts in Ad- elaide.
In the middle of the downturn two years ago, we borrowed $300,000 to top up the overdraft.
This calculates to a loss of $40 a head on our pigs over the 12-month period.
I have never been a person not to share my experiences about run- ning pigs.
years has sat on $2.50/kg. Now that’s $3.56/kg it costs me, with nothing yet going towards the cost of living and bringing up
Very affordable and easy to feed pigs at those prices.
At a cost of $300/t extra for freight to get it over the Nullarbor.
My figures year in year out are very constant, and we all know that feed is the cost that changes the most.
three children .
If we are paying $3.50
As pig farmers, we know how much the cost of proteins has gone up in that time.
Quoting Kathleen Pin- dsle in the February’s APN issue, “record sales for fresh pork”, and Margo our chief executive officer saying “a positive note for pork industry” in the same edition.
View the current edition online as a digital ip book.
Email design@porknews.com.au
to be noti ed each month when the new publication is available.
www.porknews.com.au
Wages at my farm work out at $0.36/kg.
Where am I going with this?
Freight, as we are 700km away, is $0.27.
Please allow me to keep quoting you my figures here on my farm, as APL has someone doing data entry every week for the industry.
I paid $375 for wheat, $500 for lupins and $320 for barley last year and this year the cereals have come off maybe $30/t and lupins back by $140/t.
My power, as Esperance makes its own, is $0.08.
Come on, do you know the numbers and the money eastern states farmers are paying for cattle and sheep at the moment?
Semen and genetics work out at $0.05/kg.
We all know that we all run our farms differently, but in the end, we are selling pig meat.
The vet bills come to $0.05.
So, we need every single cent of our $4.00/ kg for our pigs.
We home mix our feed and fuel is $0.05.
Esperance grows around 3 million tons of grain a year, and I feel sure that I do well buying from half a dozen farmers every year .
Quoting Peter Haydon from the December issue of the Australian Pork Newspaper, “consider pig marketing options amid decreasing feed cost.”
Of course, the public are going to be buying pork.
Our repairs and keeping things going for the pig- gery and not the farm, work out at $0.10.
Which leads me to ask the question of why, in a town the size of Esper- ance with 18,000 people, where we have only Woolworths and IGA, can’t we buy Australian bacon and an Aussie leg of ham?
What we call our pig- gery debt for interest is $0.10/kg.
It’s only in the past seven years that you can see a big increase in the cost of grain, so I will go with that.
As I have said, my grain only came back a fraction of the price from the year before.
per pig in levies that equals $0.05/kg off the top going to APL.
For the past couple of years, feeding pigs, as you eastern states’ people know, is nearly unprofit- able.
Live yeast for sows and piglets
Microscopic yeast,
macroscopic effects !
LEVUCELL SB helps maintain a stable and positive microbiota and improve sow’s intestinal transit with less constipation in peri-partum. With optimized farrowing conditions and well-being, sows fed with LEVUCELL SB deliver vigorous piglets with a reduced risk of digestive troubles in newborn piglets.
LALLEMAND ANIMAL NUTRITION SPECIFIC FOR YOUR SUCCESS
T: (07) 5451 0125 | E: LAN-Aus@lallemand.com www.lallemandanimalnutrition.com
Page 14 – Australian Pork Newspaper, May 2021
There are not many family-owned pig farms left, and I can feel myself being pushed out and re- placed by the big players. Stephen Hoffrichter
So far, this comes to $1.06/kg.
This is not including insurance, rates, book- keeping, straw, registra-
I have averaged $320/t
In actual fact, over the past 18 months, I have
I am not a computer person, but they say if you need to know some- thing then Google it.
Well, here is my little bit of research... the Australian population in 2010 was around 22 mil- lion and we ate around 20.16kg of pork per person.
Today, we have just over 25 million people and eat 20.72kg.
This extra volume has very little to do with APL.
Now, to quote Rob Smits in the March edition of APN, “increasing repro- ductive performance and productivity.”
We are increasing by a pig per litter every 10 years.
This makes sense looking back to when I started pigs – if I weaned eight per litter it was good.
At this point Rob men- tioning no imports since 1991 was not good, con- sidering what happened a few years ago.
We hear the same thing over and over, year after year since I started all those years ago.
Save feed and increase the sow’s performance.
When people ask me is there money in pigs, all I can say is that my pig- gery runs on the power of prayer and I’m still in the game.
My family works hard and lives well.
We all do our jobs and try to make a difference, and I would like to say to the APL staff that are there on our behalf to bat for us – don’t forget the little people who wear the rubber boots and not the suits.
www.porknews.com.au