I hope everyone is well.

What a refreshing change it has been to be writing at the end of October with all of our winter cereals in the ground, everything rolled, and the pre-emergence chemistry on. Well done to Ed and Dave for getting the work done in good time and in genuinely good conditions. We held our nerve on the drilling date for grassweed and BYDV reasons, and it has paid off. Hopefully we have given ourselves the best possible start to harvest 2026.

It has been a busy month on the pigs as well. We are delighted to have secured a new arrangement with an additional abattoir, giving us another outlet for finished pigs. The need came directly from rising productivity, more numbers born per sow, which I wrote about back in the summer. More pigs through the system means more outlets to find, and a real thank you to Simon at United Pig Co-operative for helping us get this in place. It is a particularly welcome development at what is proving to be a difficult period for pig sales across the UK.

There is real concern across the industry at the moment. Weekly slaughterings of finished pigs have been down since week 40 compared with both 2023 and 2024. According to AHDB, weeks 41, 42 and 43 combined are 22,753 head behind the same period in 2024 and 20,889 behind 2023, around 5% lower in both cases. Combine that with climbing average weights, rising P2 measures and several negative price changes to the SPP over the last few weeks, and we are now hoping for two genuine u-turns in November.

We really need the start of the month to follow the trend of previous years, but at a greater pace: a strong climb in numbers, followed by a proper lift for the Christmas trade. If that does not materialise, January could be a tough one.

It has been a good run for pig prices since the start of 2023, and more recently for cereal prices when you put the pig hat on and treat them as an input. The industry was desperate for it after some horrific years before that. I really hope this is just a Halloween spook, and that November kicks off with a bang.

Written by Jack Bosworth

Fourth-generation farmer at Spains Hall, Willingale. Runs the contracting team and writes most of what appears here.