THE traditional Christmas ham is under threat as the high price of grain and overseas competition make pig farming unprofitable.

Piggery owners will hold crisis meetings around the country this month, with the industry bleeding millions of dollars a week and thelivelihoods of thousands of farmers and workers threatened.

Since June, record grain prices as a result of the drought, combined with intense competition from directly and indirectly subsidised overseas piggeries in Denmark, Canada and the US, have made pig farming unprofitable.

It is now costing almost $3 a kilo to produce pork meat, for which producers are being paid about $2.30. That is, they are losing around 70c a kilo — $50 a carcass. And with the nation slaughtering about 5.5 million pigs a year, the industry is on track to lose $250 million in the next 12 months.

Consumers are benefiting in the short term from lower prices. But the industry warns that if they collapse it will no longer be possible to buy Australian ham or bacon and 35,000 people in the industry will be on dole queues.

Victorian farmer Tim Kingma said he was being forced to consider dismissing three or four staff at his Gunpork Joint Venture piggery at the Murray River town of Gunbower before Christmas because of rising feed costs.

“From a personal point of view, you are talking about a bloke with two young kids who owns a well-managed farm,” he said. “We have very good genetics, very good hog health; we have a piggery running as well as any in the industry. It is not because we are a poor producer.”

Imports have doubled in the last four years and now make up 70 per cent of all the ham, bacon and salami sold in Australia.

Australian Pork chief executive Andrew Spencer said the record level of imports was crucifying local piggeries. “Four million dollars a week is currently bleeding from the industry,” he said.

Mr Spencer predicted that the base Australian herd of 300,000 sows could be down to 200,000 within the year.

“This is a major challenge for us to manage so we don’t catastrophically collapse and we can continue to supply,” he said.

Australian Farm Institute head Mick Keogh said of all the industries effected by high grain prices pork was the most exposed because of imports.