With more and more producers bowing out of the industry due to high cost of production and huge volumes of cheaper imports, locally-grown produce is becoming increasingly difficult to find.

The MLA's National Livestock Reporting Service ranked the NSW Pork Indicator at 319 cents a kilogram on Tuesday, while the NSW Bacon Indicator reached 287c/kg.

This was a rise of 12c/kg on last month for pork, and 11c/kg for bacon in the same time period.

However, when present prices were compared with last year's the increase truly stood out.

This time last year, NLRS reported pork at 251c/kg (68c/kg lower than this week's), and bacon at 228c/kg (59c/kg lower).

A spokesman for Australian Pork Limited said despite the gains, the high cost of feed grain has prevented producers from making any significant margins.

“As we head into Christmas, it is expected this trend will continue – and it will need to if producers are going to make some profits,” the spokesman said.

“The domestic trend is consistent with the international market, with pig prices going up throughout the world.”

NSW Farmers Association pork committee chairman, Malcolm Gett, said the hope in the industry was for prices to push to more than 300c/kg for bacon pigs – the necessary target for producers to make a profit.

“Historically, prices should be going up in the months leading to Christmas,” Mr Gett said.

“However, the hope this year is, because of the lack of supply, prices will get a lot dearer and producers will actually be able to make a bit of money.”