Policies, pressures, and progress
Sarah is a ‘passionate advocate for Irish agriculture, full stop’, she says. But pigs are her priority. She comes from a suckler farm run by her parents in Co. Longford but her father, Brendan, was involved in pig production for as long as she can remember and would be very well known in the sector. Pig production was something she was exposed to growing up, before taking two part-time jobs while in college: one with Elite Sires in Northern Ireland, one of the biggest providers of pig semen in Ireland; and another with Future Pigs Ltd. All of these things gave her a strong foundation in, and knowledge of, pigs. She has a great respect for the animal, which comes across in the way she talks about them.
“Pigs are very, very clever animals; I don’t think they get enough credit. But they are also a serious driver,” Sarah says. “When you give them the right tools, the right growth metrics, the right feed, and you mind them well, what they can deliver is quite remarkable.”
A dire time
In 2021, Sarah took on the IFA role in the midst of one of the most challenging times for the sector. The Covid-19 pandemic and Russia-Ukraine war combined had a devastating impact on Irish piggeries and a Teagasc report from 2022 revealed that seven per cent of pig farmers had ceased production while a further three per cent de-stocked and not likely to return. Sarah says that this was the harsh reality of what was an ‘absolutely dire’ time for farmers.
In at the deep end, Sarah’s first major task was working to secure the Pig Exceptional Payment Scheme, which provided temporary financial aid to pig farmers. “I can’t explain how important that was. If you can imagine at that time being a pig farmer, loading them up for the factory, and pretending that you are slapping a €70 note onto the back of each pig – that is what was happening. You were losing €70 on average per pig at the time. So, that funding was crucial.”
Improvements
Things have improved, however, largely due to a decrease in supply of pigmeat in the EU. The pigmeat sector has come back to perform strongly throughout 2024 and into this year, and there has been steady increase in production, export value, and overall price stability. But challenges remain. Sarah explains: “The feed costs now are averaging around €1.31/kg on a finisher pig, and your pig price is about €2.28/kg. Pre-Covid, the feed cost was about €1.25/kg but it went astronomical to peak at around €1.70/kg, and farmers were losing around €70 per pig during the crisis. Now, there is good profitability, which is great.
“But if we look at building costs in this context, an average 700-sow integrated unit in 2010, excluding the site, would have been about €3.5m and the cost today would be about €5.5m, excluding the site. So that translates to a cost per sow in 2010 of €5,000, which now costs €7,900 per sow space. So, while we talk about the price being where it is, it needs to be where it is, and it needs to stay there and perhaps go further for farmers to be able to keep up with new regulations and policies that we are going to have to meet. Farmers cannot take them on board without being supported; either the consumer of Europe will have to support.”
Investment
Pig farmers are extremely adaptable, versatile, business driven, and know their figures, Sarah says. And while there is good investment happening on Irish pig farms right now, due to the strong pig prices, more could be done to modernise facilities and enhance animal welfare. But current funding under the Targeted Agricultural Modernisation Scheme is not ticking the right boxes, she says, and does not tally with new pig-housing and pig-welfare expectations.
At this year’s Irish Pig Health Society symposium, Sarah spoke about the Pig and Poultry Capital Investment Scheme, under TAMS III, which offers a 40 per cent grant rate, with a €500,000 investment ceiling. That ceiling, she says, needs to rise, and the IFA will be calling for that to happen. “The TAMS spec now calls for a minimum of 33 per cent solid floor. As you can imagine, slats are a very efficient way to manage manure, but once you bring in that element of solid floor, you are increasing labour demands hugely. And depending on a farmer’s feeding system, that percentage might change also.”
Changes
In addition to the above, one of the main changes coming down the line for pig farmers relates to the introduction of free lactation, says Sarah. Speaking in the Dáil recently, Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Martin Heydon said the new specification for pig housing recently published by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine ‘does not allow the use of gestation stalls for sows, and it includes a requirement for larger farrowing pens in which sows can only be kept in a farrowing crate for a few days in and around farrowing’. He added that the rest of the time, the sows must be loose in their pens with their piglets.
This aligns with the EU’s Farm to Fork strategy, which sees the European Commission committed to reviewing all existing EU animal welfare legislation, including that relating to pigs. Phasing out the use of individual animal confinement, including sow crates and stalls, is part of this, in line with scientific advice and pending the outcome of an impact assessment, the minister said.
There will be transition period allowed to facilitate any new legislation around this, Sarah says, and that period will be very much needed. “However, this is not in legislation yet and if it is to be brought in, farmers will need to be heavily supported financially,” she explains. “If you are knocking a house to rebuild it to a much higher spec, and it requires planning permission, that is a very difficult hurdle to cross here, nationally. You might want to improve your farm by bringing in more welfare-friendly production facilities for your pigs, but securing planning to do that is a big challenge. The space issue means that you may need to build a bigger building than you had to keep the same number of sows.”
WelFarmers
Ireland is a participating country in the WelFarmers Project, an initiative aimed at improving the welfare of pigs within the EU. It has set up eight national innovation networks from eight different countries involving pig farmers, advisors, vets, and researchers to address the challenges of the upcoming change in the European pig-welfare legislation. As well as promoting free lactation, the initiative also looks at challenges and opportunities for moving towards rearing pigs with undocked tails; improving castration practices; and improving space and flooring.
The IFA is supportive of and involved in the initiative. Sarah gives her view on the parts of the initiative that are most pertinent to Ireland: “Overall, the sow space allowance aspect is a positive one to engage with but I think that will require a longer transition period and there needs to be an economic impact assessment completed on this.
“Rearing pigs with intact tails, for example, is a controversial ask. If everything else isn’t running at 100 per cent on the farm – ventilation, feed, breeding – then I would be really concerned about the impact of rearing pigs indoors with intact tails. It is, currently, nearly impossible on commercial pig farms to rear pigs with intact tails. Farmers are trying it and are working with the DAFM on the project but it is not simple and will require huge investment.”
Often, Nordic countries are used as best-practice examples in this conversation. Finland has banned tail docking since 2003 and higher space requirements have been in place since 2013.
“Theirs is a completely different industry to much of Europe. The farms are smaller, they also get paid a significant premium per pig sold with intact tails,” she says. Does she think that this would work in Ireland? Would the consumer pay more? “That is a difficult question to answer. I still think that in our current system, it wouldn't work. I am not saying it is impossible – if there is funding there to invest and if planning wasn’t an issue, and if the labour situation was improved, nothing is impossible. If the consumer wants it to happen, then farmers must be supported; they can’t do it out of their own pockets.”
As part of the WelFarmers project, a total of 192 good practices (two rounds of 96 each) divided into the four themes will be identified. From them, 40 best practices (20 each round) will be selected and finally 24 (12 each round) of them will be awarded. Sarah says they are currently compiling the first round: “We have a meeting at the end of June to discuss the best practices, then we will meet later in the year to pick the next round, and it gives us a chance to engage with farmers across Europe that, for example, might have free lactation in place or that might have better space allowance. It provides great firsthand learning,” she says.
Sarah is also poultry policy executive with the IFA.