PIG FARMERS SQUEAL - Hurricane fallout leaves market-ready animals stuck on farms

WESTERN BUREAU:

For Westmoreland pig farmer Michael Murphy, the numbers no longer add up.

Every month, he must find $100,000 to repay a loan. Every week, he spends roughly $300,000 on feed alone. Yet the price he receives for his pigs has remained virtually unchanged for years.

Now, with the two major slaughterhouses in Sweet River and Paradise, Westmoreland, and another in Black River, St Elizabeth, still closed following Hurricane Melissa, dozens of market-ready pigs are eating into already razor-thin profits while farmers wait for processing space.

The Sweet River facility, which would slaughter up to 1,000 pigs per week, was shuttered before the hurricane, while the Paradise facility has been closed since Melissa’s devastation last October.

“I have 35 pigs ready right now, but I have piglets to come here next and other months also,” Murphy told The Sunday Gleaner.

“My only source of income is farming.”

Murphy said the situation has become even more worrying amid reports that requests have been made to import pork to address an alleged shortage within the hotel sector.

“If they import pork ... my business is going to go through trouble right now,” he said.

Beyond the processing bottleneck, farmers say their greatest frustration is that while feed, medication and other production costs have climbed steadily, the farm-gate price of pork has remained stuck at about $300 per pound for nearly three years.

Murphy said the increases have eaten away at almost every dollar of profit.

“Farming is very expensive. It’s very, very expensive,” he said.

“I spend probably about $1.2 million on feed for the month. I sell, like, 30 pigs, for the month ... . Before the feed [price] was raised, you could earn better.”

Keeping pigs beyond market weight only worsens the situation.

“The only thing I do right now is pig farming ... I don’t know how long I can continue like this.”

Fellow Burnt Savannah farmer Garvis Williams echoed those concerns.

“For three years now, the price hasn’t gone up,” Williams said.

“The feed has gone up ... and how much years now we don’t get no raise.”

$1.2 million on feed monthly

Williams estimates he spends about $1.2 million on feed monthly while also paying two workers every week.

“We get back maybe about $80,000 when you’re done spending,” he said.

“If you continue feeding them (and then) you stop feeding them, they will start fighting.”

Williams believes the closure of slaughterhouses has made an already difficult situation significantly worse.

“Everybody is crying right now,” he said.

“I’m asking the Government if they can do something like build a slaughterhouse in Westmoreland.”

Williams, who has been raising pigs for more than 25 years, said he had managed to maintain long-standing customers, but admitted that processing constraints have limited opportunities.

He explained that while he consistently supplies local buyers with pigs, the closure of the slaughterhouses affects the available processing capacity and limits how many animals these buyers can accept.

Like Murphy, he fears imported pork would make matters worse.

“That’s going to mash up our thing now,” Williams said.

“We only have two markets. And then, when they start importing, what’s going to happen? Both will basically shut down.”

Jamaica Pig Farmers’ Association President Hanif Brown insists that Jamaica has enough pigs to satisfy demand if adequate slaughtering capacity is restored.

“We have said to the ministry, ‘We are totally against any importation of pork because there are enough pigs on the island’,” Brown said.

“They can’t argue on quality ... They can’t argue about supply, because the supply is there. It’s always just price.”