And the impact over the next few months, what does that look like, Alasdair?

What we are seeing is some producers, um, depending on the contract they're on, um, the, the average pig price is, uh, as measured by the, um, SPP, is at about a hundred and eighty pence a kilo.

We're seeing prices of a hundred and thirty, a hundred and fifty pence.

Um, that's heavy we-- they are suffering heavy weekly losses.

That equates to tens, in some cases hundreds of thousands, um, o-o-of pounds a year.

But almost the bigger problem is, uh, this, the, the fact that so many people have had notice served on their contracts at once means that we've got a real problem.

People, p-people are literally going to be, uh, producing pigs, having pigs ready to be sold in the autumn with nowhere, you know, no contracted o-outlet to, to sell them in.

But this time, where do we go from here?

Some people worse affected than others, depending on their supply chains.

chains.Allied with it, I'm afraid we've seen a downturn in, in European prices.

That has put, not necessarily import pressure, it's not necessarily that more is being imported to displace it, but it's put price pressure on, so the price has been falling.

Add into that mix, you've got the war in the Middle East.

That's starting to push up costs.

Just give us some of the reasons why this is happening.

It's a, just a combination of, of, of factors really.

In response to what was a relatively good time, some of the bigger companies have expanded herds, put more sows down.

Last year, we had, um, some good growth rates, good, good breeding productivity.

That was compounded in the autumn by st- one of the big factories was, had, had a couple of weeks maintenance.

That created a bit of a backlog on farms.

Demand generally has been flat.

Do you think other supermarkets will follow?

There were tentative signs of a recovery, but we do seem to have taken a little bit of a backwards step.

Exactly that, yeah.

And exactly that.

We had the terrible crisis of, uh, four y- uh, yeah, four years ago.

As you say, things, things improved.

Um, we've had a couple of very steady years in the market.

And it's just really, it's different to last time in that that was very much about Brexit and about a lack of labor in abattoirs and backlogs forming, prices falling.

And the latest situation being, Alistair, that retail giant Morrisons, a big buyer of British pigs, has served notice on a number of its pig farmer suppliers.

Just give us some of the reasons why this is happening.

It's a, just a combination of, of, of factors really.

In response to what was a relatively good time, some of the bigger companies have expanded herds, put more sows down.

Last year we had, um, some good growth rates, good, good breeding productivity.

That was compounded in the autumn by st- one of the big factories was, had, had a couple of weeks' maintenance.

That created a bit of a backlog on farms.

Demand generally has been flat.

Do you think other supermarkets will follow?