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Barney Kay, MD – Agriculture at Pilgrim’s UK
The UK pig sector continues to face unbelievable challenges. A sequence of unprecedented elements, such because the rising price of feed, labour shortages and a backlog of pigs on-farm, are contributing to a melting pot of difficulties for farmers and the sector at-large.
As the biggest producer and processor of upper welfare pork, representing 30% of the overall variety of UK pigs processed available in the market, we’re working intently with our farmers to get by these difficult instances collectively.
We now have all watched the unbelievable volatility of the uncooked materials markets, at instances with disbelief. With feed costs already at unprecedented highs initially of the 12 months, the Russian invasion of Ukraine led to inflation none of us have seen earlier than.
I do know from conversations each inside the enterprise and with our farmers, one can really feel helpless within the face of such headwinds, so what can we do? An previous boss of mine all the time mentioned, management what you may and don’t fear about what you may’t.
What’s inside our management?
- To enhance bodily efficiency we’ve made the next modifications:
- We’ve switched to five-week weaning, which is resulting in stronger more healthy piglets which might be performing higher throughout the grower/finisher phases the place the large prices are incurred.
- We’re feeding our sows in troughs, as an alternative of spinning the feed out into the paddock to feed each the sows and the birds! We imagine this protects about 8% of feed.
- Genetics – by our latest modifications we’re seeing diminished aggression (and due to this fact danger of tail biting), plus improved marbling (and due to this fact consuming high quality) while having nice effectivity of feed as nicely.
- Rising lodging. The BQP blueprint designed to be fast and straightforward to erect and optimise pig efficiency.
- Knowledge – in the event you can’t measure it, you may’t enhance it.
- Our websites use operational excellence methods to assist them hone into areas that can drive efficiency. We now have just lately embraced this and are being extra disciplined in how we handle our KPIs and focus our power on those that basically drive the enterprise – conserving it easy and sensible are important for this to be embraced.
- Feed and danger administration
- One profit of getting a big worldwide father or mother firm is that we work very intently with their worldwide uncooked materials shopping for staff.
- By means of the worldwide perception we get from the commodity staff and dealing intently with our feed firm, we proceed to navigate the unprecedented volatility of those markets. That’s to not say we’ve entry to low cost feed – nobody has, however our staff has been unbelievable at avoiding the worst peaks.
- One among our key areas of focus is decreasing our soya utilisation within the food plan, which is a big driver of the general carbon footprint of the pig. We now have the bottom degree of utilisation in pig diets inside Europe and our R&D farm is exploring a variety of options proteins that may assist discover options and scale back this additional.
The issues out of our management? Effectively, we’ll let others fear about these and keep centered on the issues we will do one thing about!
5-week weaning
This was initially developed to assist address the EU requirement to take away zinc from the food plan. Nonetheless we’re seeing many advantages:
- An additional week with the sow provides extra strong, wholesome and constant piglets.
- There are few necessities for progress checks.
- The extra week spent with the sow is greater than compensated from wean to complete, with total batch size coming down considerably.
Though a big funding throughout our built-in out of doors bred operation, as all our herds progressively convert we will see the well being, welfare and industrial good thing about this step change.
Environmentally accountable, sustainable pig manufacturing
I do know all farmers are beneath a lot strain to cut back farm emissions, whereas growing meals manufacturing (feeding 9bn folks by 2050!) and bettering animal welfare – not a straightforward conundrum.
BQP assesses the soil of all its farms and works intently with our bodies just like the Rivers Belief and FWAG (Farm Animal Advisory Group) to make sure we each mitigate the environmental impression of our out of doors pigs and normally really assist regenerate the land and soil.
Our goal is to take care of grass cowl with our sow paddocks, so farmers work intently with landlords to make sure we dovetail into their rotations, to permit time for grass to determine correctly earlier than introducing pigs.
When Defra brings within the new Environmental Land Administration scheme (ELMs) in 2024, I can see extra farmers recognising the worth that out of doors pigs can plan of their rotation. Offering a break from quick (wheat, barley, rape) rotations, serving to handle challenges like blackgrass and including worthwhile natural matter and vitamins to the soil.
Our pigs occupy c. 8,000 acres, a part of 32,000 acres rotation – sooner or later the worth of our black gold (pig muck) might help our landlords commerce carbon for firms seeking to offset their emissions, as our natural matter is locking up carbon, bettering water holding capability within the soil and decreasing the quantity of inorganic fertiliser wanted by arable farmers – a win, win, round and extra conventional farming rotation.
Precision sow feeding
A extremely good instance of the win, win method described above is our funding in sow troughs on all our breeding farms.
Beforehand sows have been fed utilizing the “nut chucker” spreading sow rolls throughout the paddock – this noisy approach of feeding acted just like the dinner bell for wild birds, leading to a monetary impression of misplaced feed to birds and vermin and creating danger of salmonella contaminating the ft of the birds.
We then additionally realised an unintended optimistic environmental profit. Pigs gained’t defecate the place they eat, so when fed with the nut chucker the pig bathroom was concentrated across the fringe of the paddock leaving excessive nutrient concentrations.
Now, with this new method, manure is unfold evenly throughout the paddock, decreasing danger of leaching and bettering the even unfold of vitamins for the following crop.
Individuals
It’s the those that have make BQP, as a part of Pilgrim’s UK, the kind of enterprise farmers have trusted for over 40 years. I do know the final 12 months has been laborious on everybody within the pig trade and this may pressure even the strongest relationships.
I’m so pleased with our staff, whether or not out within the subject with our farmers or within the workplace who’ve labored so laborious over the past 12 months with such professionalism and integrity.
We are attempting to make sure we help all these we work with instantly, or not directly, making topics like psychological well being one thing folks really feel snug speaking about and know the place they’ll get assist and help.
We really feel we’ve a lot to be pleased with as a British pig trade and we have to be extra assured in supporting our clients to inform that story on to shoppers, serving to them to grasp the pleasure our folks have in rearing the very best welfare, high quality pigs for households throughout the UK.
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