Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
up for the lack of animal feed. The beaches of Goa are (or at least were) kept spotlessly
clean and the latrines emptied by pigs which end up as spare ribs in the beach bars.
The other main function of pigs is to use up surplus grain in a good year. This is not just
an economy measure; it also serves to introduce elasticity into the grain market, through
what is known as the 'livestock feed buffer' (see
Chapter 10
). Pigs are not the only recip-
ient of feed-buffer grain - it is also fed to beef, dairy animals or poultry. But feeding it to
cows is inefficient because the bovine gut is designed to digest fibrous materials such as
grass, not high protein feeds like grain. Poultry convert grain into meat more efficiently
than pigs; but the advantage of pigs is that they have a high percentage of fat - which is
not only in short supply in temperate climates, but also makes it easier to preserve the meat
(which is why we don't have chicken 'bacon' or chicken 'ham').
A farmer who feeds his (or her) stock entirely upon bought-in grain is putting himself
in a risky position, since he is completely at the mercy of an inherently volatile market. A
farmer who wishes to hedge against disaster should either be growing the grain himself, or
else be partially reliant upon alternative feeds. The main alternative feed for cows is grass;
for pigs it has always been, and it always will be, waste.
This is what the UK's pig farmers have manifestly failed to do - they are now largely de-
pendent upon grain and market-linked products for their feed - and that is why their piggy
bank has been losing money.
In the early 1990s Professor Peter Brooks of Devon's now defunct Seale Hayne agricul-
tural college gave a lecture entitled 'Rediscovering the Environmentally Friendly Pig'. In
it he provided figures showing that only 33 per cent of UK compound pig food consisted
of grains fit for human consumption; 22 per cent was oil seed residues and the remainder
consisted mainly of various other kinds of animal and vegetable food residues.
4
However, he warned that the pig's role as recycler of waste food was under threat from
a number of factors, including:
(i) Changing animal feed legislation
(ii) The concentration of the animal feed industry into national corporations too large to cope with intrinsically
variable raw materials or those only available in small quantities.
(iii) Lower cereal prices as a result of EU policies and trade liberalization.
(iv) The influence of the supermarkets who were 'increasingly dictating methods of production … and impos-
ing limits on the range of raw materials and dietary inclusions'.
Brooks concluded:
the Pig must not be allowed to become a competitor with Man for food products but must remain a converter
of that which Man cannot eat, or rejects, into a product which he can and will eat.
Fifteen years later, Professor Brooks' fears have been fulfilled. The proportion of cereals
in pig food has almost doubled. Mole Valley Farmers' grower mix contains 66 per cent