$1600 a week while he gambles on

the price of grain coming down by

the end of this year.

Mr Pollard, the son of a pioneering

pork producer with 11,000 animals

in production near Young, and

producers like him have suddenly

become Australian agriculture's

biggest losers.

His last good season on his 1600ha

farm yielded 500 tonne of grain, the

most costly item of production for

his pigs. Since then he has been

buying grain on the open market.

In October prices soared from

$300 to $500 a tonne, sending many

producers, already reeling from

cheap imports, to the wall.

The scale of Mr Pollard's operation

makes any notion of a swift

departure almost impossible, even

though he calculates he'll lose

$900,000 this year.

He has too many pregnant sows,

too much money invested in infrastructure

and too much faith in

his farming livelihood to walk

away.

Staying put means he is losing 50c

a kilo on his returns, which seems

small until multiplied by the overall

78kg weight of a market pig and the

number sold about 460 a week. In

all, that adds up to $16,473 a week.

Appeals to the Productivity Commission

for assistance so far have

been fruitless.

Australian Pork says the commission

thinks grain prices are solely

to blame for the industry's plight,

when it is cheap imports from

Denmark, Canada and the United

States which are sending farmers

broke.

Mr Pollard said over the past two

years the price of a dozen eggs rose 80 per cent, a litre of milk rose 105

per cent and pork rose only 30 per

cent.

Producers of all three commodities

incurred the same increases for

grain, but pork producers were the

only ones hit with competition from

pig meat dumped on to Australian

markets from heavily subsidised

foreigners.

Plotting a graph on the exodus of

producers and likely drop in

demand for grain, he says he's

relying on a last man standing

syndrome, which will enable him to

recover and survive in a volatile

industry.

Australian Pork estimates the

nation's 300,000 sow herd will drop

to 240,000 as a result of imports.

During the industry's formative

years in the 1960s more than 45,000

producers built up the sow herd to a

peak a decade later of 460,000.

In Mr Pollard's air-conditioned

farrowing (birthing) sheds made of

insulated panels, piglets are left to

suckle until weaned.

From there they gorge on wheat,

sorghum, barley and pellets, gaining

weight at an astonishing rate as

much as a kilo a day before

they're dispatched to nearby abattoirs.

Sows

the size of an upturned

coffee table suckle 12 piglets at a

time and have a few days grace

between weaning and mating.

After delivering five litters, they're

sent to slaughter for processing into

salami and other meat products.

From the second they're born a

pig's days are numbered.

It takes 22 weeks before they're

killed.

Imports, inconsistent labelling of

small goods in supermarkets and the

persistent drought are causing many

farmers in the industry to contemplate

their end as well.