Taking Back Control: Why I Want Us Selling Our Pork Direct

By Jack Bosworth, Director, FJ Bosworth & Sons. Published 20 December 2021.

Happy New Year. I hope everyone is keeping well and feeling refreshed after the festivities.

Asda gave us pig farmers an early Christmas present this year by significantly increasing the proportion of British pork on their shelves. That genuinely matters and I want to say thank you. At the same time, there will be plenty of producers going into 2022 wondering if they will still have a business by the end of it.

Will we see an improvement this year? Honestly, your guess is as good as mine. Fingers and toes crossed for a better one.

A different kind of New Year’s resolution

Since the backlog of pigs started building up across the country, I have been pretty good at moaning about the problems and sharing the frustration of producers everywhere about why the situation is not improving fast enough.

My New Year’s resolution is not to stop feeling that way (unfortunately for everyone else). It is to take more action. More control over our own supply and demand here on the farm, and over what happens to our pigs once they leave it.

Why I want to sell direct

We do not currently sell any pork direct from the farm. It has always been an ambition of mine to offer that, and I cannot think of a better time to get the project off the ground.

When I write out all the things it ticks off, the case answers itself:

• Fewer food miles. From our fields to a local plate.
• More demand for our pork, sold on its own merits rather than buried in an anonymous supply chain.
• Clearer labelling. People want to know exactly what they are buying.
• Less packaging.
• Supporting local. Supporting small businesses.
• Real sustainability, not the kind that lives on a marketing page.
• Better trust and full traceability. Same farm, same family, same pigs, same butcher.
• Hopefully, better margins at source. Which is us, the producers.

This will not, on its own, solve the crisis the industry is still very much in. But if more producers can start gaining a bit more control over their own product from farm to consumer, then in the words of one well-known retailer, every little helps. The retailers themselves, in my opinion, need to do a lot more to help us sell more British pork.

What happens next

The next steps for me are to continue the research and the initial conversations I have been having with experts on setting a venture like this up, and to get started with butchery training.

I will keep you updated with how it progresses. Realistically, given how busy things are on the farm at the moment, progress is likely to be steady rather than spectacular. The right thing to do here is not the quickest one.

Wishing everyone a successful start to 2022.

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Editor’s note (May 2026)

Jack wrote this piece in late 2021. In 2024, FJ Bosworth & Sons acquired Procters Sausages, a long-established sausage maker, and the farm-to-fork model described above is now a working reality. Pork from the Bosworth herd is processed into Procters Sausages and supplied to trade and consumer customers under the Procters brand. You can read more on the Our Pork section of this site, or visit procters-sausages.co.uk.

In the same year, FJ Bosworth & Sons won the National Pig Awards Sustainable Farming Award 2024, and was a finalist for both National Pig Awards Pig Producer of the Year 2024 and Farmers Weekly Mixed Farm of the Year 2024.

About the author

Jack Bosworth is a fourth-generation farmer and Director of FJ Bosworth & Sons, an arable and pig farming business at Spains Hall, Willingale, Essex. The farm has been in the family since 1919, and Jack farms alongside his father Stuart Bosworth, who was named Farmers Weekly Pig Farmer of the Year in 2011. The business is Red Tractor assured and runs an integrated farm-to-fork model, with home-grown cereals milled on site using solar-generated electricity.

You can follow Jack’s articles on fjbosworth.com, or get in touch via the WhatsApp link on the site.