A leading pig farmer has slammed the €1m pig aid payment allocated to Irish pig farmers as ‘absymal’.

It comes as pig farmers report prices dropping towards €1.30c/kg this week. Reports of a 4c/kg cut in the price of pigs would see the average 500-sow unit hit by nearly €1,000 a week.

Michael Monagle, a pig farmer and Chairman of the North South Pig Company NI Ltd, has said in an open letter that the aid smacks of a forgotten industry and that the pig sector is going through a ‘silent crisis’ for some time now.

Of the €27.4m aid payments made to dairy and pig farmers, pig farmers are still waiting to be paid the €1m that was allocated to them.

The Department of Agriculture is yet to contact farmers about how to apply for funding under the scheme, however it confirmed that it is in the process of writing out to pig farmers inviting applications to apply.

The Minister for Agriculture, Simon Coveney, confirmed that flat rate payments will issue to all pig farmers with a minimum level of supply of 200 pigs slaughtered in 2015.

This will ensure that the payment is directed to those farmers most affected by the price volatility, thus meeting the requirements of the EU Regulations providing the funding, according to the Department.

While pig farmers are left waiting for their share of the funding, their dairy farming counterparts were paid their aid package monies before Christmas.

“We obviously shouldn’t expect to be compensated more than pro-rata with others in the package but we should expect to receive our fair share,” Monagle said.

Monagle pointed out that the total package for distribution between dairy and pig farmers was €27.4m and that the pig farmers received €1m of this.

“Using some crude calculations (and what would be considered unacceptable farm gate prices) to compare the industries:

Dairy output is approximately 5,500m litres per annum at 30c/L = €1,650,000,000.
Pigmeat output is approximately 298m kgs at1.55c/kg = € 461,900,000.

“On that basis and if ‘hardship’ was equal you would expect that pig farmers would get approximately 22% of the fund, but they got 3.65% – how was this calculated or accepted by those involved?”

Monagle has said that basically there has been a poor divide of funds.

He has said that pig farmers and their representatives are much too quiet for their own good and must change their ways to get any recognition.

“Remember, ‘out of sight, out of mind’, we won’t get anywhere ‘standing behind the door’.”