Danish pig farmers lose up to 400 kroner per pig

Danish farmers are currently losing between 350 and 400 kroner on every pig sent to slaughter, DR reports. The costs of feed, labour and mortgage financing are exceeding the price farmers receive from slaughterhouses.

“It is a catastrophe,” said Esper Goul Jensen, who operates pig farms in central and western Jutland.

Jensen, one of Denmark’s largest pig producers, sends nearly 320,000 pigs to slaughter each year. He said he had never seen the market in such a critical state.

“Everyone is heading towards the wall, and it is a process of elimination in Europe. The task is to cut back as much as possible,” he said.

Jensen is reducing production by slaughtering one in every 10 breeding sows, which will result in fewer piglets and reduce his losses. Several other large pig producers have reported taking similar steps.

Historically low prices

Danish Crown, Denmark’s largest slaughterhouse group, sets the price of pork each week, and other slaughterhouses follow its pricing. The price has been 6.90 kroner per kilo for the past four weeks. Even with subsequent payments, agricultural economist Jakob Vesterlund Olsen described the level as historically low.

“They are unusually low, particularly when you take inflation into account,” said Olsen, a senior adviser at the University of Copenhagen.

Prices may have reached similarly low levels in 1999 or in the late 1970s, he said, but production costs have risen significantly since then.

“This situation cannot continue for much longer before we see bankruptcies,” Olsen said.

The crisis is being driven by an oversupply of meat on the European market. Relatively high pig prices over the past two or three years encouraged some producers to expand production.

In addition, an outbreak of African swine fever in Spain, a major pork producer, halted Spanish pork exports to Asia. The meat instead remained in Europe, while Brazil, the United States and China took over the Asian market.

Individual Danish consumers are responsible for only a small part of the problem, Olsen said, because their purchases account for a limited share of Denmark’s total production.

Pig prices have historically fluctuated, but the current losses have continued since the beginning of the year, with the downturn now at its lowest point. Allan Høegsberg, chief economist at Seges Innovation, said the average loss over the period had been somewhat smaller.

“Looking at the average from the beginning of the year, when the quoted price was higher, up to today, we estimate the loss at approximately 250 kroner per slaughter pig from birth to slaughter,” he said.

Animal welfare rules

The government wants to reduce exports of piglets and support the production of pigs slaughtered in Denmark. That is the part of the industry currently facing the greatest financial pressure.

The financial crisis is not caused by the so-called “pig election” or by demands for improved animal welfare in pig housing, Jensen said. However, he warned that stricter requirements could hit producers like him hard, not only farmers who export piglets.

“You cannot cut the head off an industry simply by tightening the screws,” Jensen said.

Although farmers might wish to leave their barns empty for a while, this is not straightforward. The sows are pregnant, piglets are on the way, and contracts must be honoured.

Pig producers have also become very large and financially well-equipped in recent years. Many can withstand a period of losses, even if those losses run into millions of kroner.

The outlook for the rest of 2026 is not much better. A forecast issued by Seges Innovation last Thursday significantly lowered its previous expectations. Pork prices are now expected to remain around 7.50 to 8.00 kroner per kilo for the rest of the year, while the price would need to average about 11.50 kroner for a slaughter pig to break even for the farmer.