Scotland offers extra cash support for pig producers

Scotland’s Pig Producers Hardship Support Scheme is to be extended with a further £680,000 of funding.

The Scottish government introduced the scheme last summer after the temporary closure of the Quality Pig Processors (QPP) plant at Brechin. This was because the Covid-19 pandemic led to a backlog of pigs waiting for slaughter and the abattoir’s licence to export pork to China was suspended.

The loss of this lucrative export market has continued to have a negative effect on pig producers in Scotland, who were already facing unprecedented challenges because of supply chain problems and rising feed prices.

See also: Scotland’s £700,000 pig hardship scheme opens for applications

Rural affairs secretary Mairi Gougeon said she was pleased to announce the extension of the scheme, which underlined the government’s support for the livestock sector.

“The scheme will open early this year, when a further announcement will be made providing guidance for applications,” she said.

“I would encourage all eligible producers to submit their applications and benefit from this additional financial support.”

NFU Scotland (NFUS) welcomed the extension, which it said it had pushed to secure, and would go some way to alleviate the immense pressure that the industry was currently under due to low supply chain staffing levels as a direct result of the pandemic.

“These issues caused by Covid come at a time of high input costs on farms, poor prices globally, and a lack of equivalent controls and checks on EU product coming into the market, upsetting market balance and affecting the sector’s ability to ride out the disruption caused by the pandemic on its processing sector,” said an NFUS statement. 

Scheme history

The Pig Hardship Support Scheme was first made available in August 2021 to deliver £715,000 worth of funding to eligible pig producers who supplied QPP between 8 February and 31 March 2021.

Farmers were eligible if they could show that they supplied pigs to QPP during those dates and that they suffered a £15 a pig discount on what they would normally have been paid for those animals.

An additional £680,000 has been found to fund the second round of the scheme.