According to Aleksander Dargiewicz, president of the management board of Polpig, the last 10 years of the fight against ASF have completely changed Polish pig production. There are only a few producers left on the market, and their chance to survive is to strive for production integration.
– ASF was a real testing ground for domestic producers. It led to tens of thousands of farms going out of business, and it is safe to say that the best breeders remained in production, and they have nothing to be ashamed of compared to producers from Denmark or Germany, the expert emphasized.
In his opinion, ASF had another natural consequence, which was the need to integrate producers:
– This is very important from the industry’s point of view: pig production in Western Europe is highly integrated both horizontally (producer groups) and vertically (cooperation between the breeder and the meat plant). If we want to compete with them, we must head in the same direction, because even large farms producing at a high level if left to themselves will have a big problem staying on the market. Integration between producers will allow them to have a stronger negotiating position with suppliers of production means, but also with recipients of livestock. In turn, horizontal integration is important not only from the perspective of breeders, but also from the perspective of meat plants themselves: if domestic farms go out of business, they will be forced to import more and more raw materials for processing, and they will not be able to sustain this economically in the long run, the specialist emphasizes.
As Dargiewicz adds, consolidation is important because there are more and more threats to producers. And it’s not only about ASF and its consequences:
– There is more and more talk about introducing regulations limiting the transport time of live animals, which may ultimately lead to the loss of supplies of weaners from Denmark. Today, there is no way our industry would be able to supply domestic fattening farms. We also have a growing competitor in the east: currently, pig production in Ukraine has many problems and in its case, pork imports are many times higher than exports. However, let us remember that the war will end one day and Ukrainians have enormous production potential. They have a huge supply of cheap feed and low labor costs. They still lack technology, genetics and knowledge, but within a decade they will be able to make up for the shortcomings and become a serious player, just like in the case of live poultry. We must realistically take this threat into account, says the specialist.
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