15/10/2026
🐷 IS THIS REALLY THE END OF THE ROAD FOR THE SMALL PIG FARMER? 🐷
Nine beautiful, perfectly formed, 7-week-old Saddleback weaners loaded up and off to market today.
Weeks of care, countless hours of work, feed, bedding, water, electricity and all the other costs that come with rearing pigs. Not to mention the responsibility of breeding healthy, quality rare-breed livestock.
And the result?
A dismally small return for nine cracking little pigs. 😞
£2 each!
But wait, it gets better!
After the market has taken its minimum commission and added cleaning costs, the farmer is left with an invoice to pay. Yes, you read that correctly. You can sell nine pigs at market and still owe money for the privilege!
How is this sustainable? How can anyone justify a system where the person doing all the work, carrying all the risk and paying all the bills ends up worse off for taking their livestock to market?
We hear so much about supporting British farming, protecting rare breeds and preserving our countryside heritage. Yet the people actually doing it are being squeezed from every direction.
Rare-breed pig farming isn't a get-rich-quick scheme. It's a commitment, a passion and often a way of life. But passion doesn't pay the feed merchant, and heritage doesn't pay the electricity bill.
At what point do we say enough is enough?
🐷 Will there be any small-scale pig farmers left by 2027? 🐷
Or will we look back and wonder how we allowed dedicated breeders of traditional British pigs to disappear because the numbers simply didn't add up?
Every time a small breeder gives up, we lose more than a farmer. We lose valuable bloodlines, experience, diversity and another little piece of British farming history.
Something has to change. Farmers cannot keep producing quality livestock at a loss and be expected to carry on regardless.
🐷 We can't save rare breeds if we can't save the people who rear them.
Please share if you believe our small farmers and traditional British breeds deserve a future.
