Ozzy Scott
Well-Known Member
At least we would be competing during a low cost period
Factory Prices General thread
- Thread starter nashmach
- Start date
Seems to be more life coming back to the trade. Only a small number of cattle here and I got a phone call today see was there any fit . Told him no,not for another month or so. He pleaded with me to not pass him when selling. He offered another man 3.80 today to kill this week
muckymanor
Well-Known Member
Steers €3.80 for this day week is what I was quoted today.
WestCorkBoy
Well-Known Member
Great to see a lift, not sure it's available down here, but that wouldn't be unusual. Were quoting for this week at 3.70.
muckymanor
Well-Known Member
€3.75 was paid in local factory this morning. I was there with a friend to drop off 3 and purchasing man gave me that price for next week. Its a long way off where it needs to be. Possible that it will rise some more in march. April could bring a bump. They are already talking that the temporary trade agreement with the UK comes to an end on April 1st. You can be sure that it will be used as an excuse to drop prices yet several agri media outlets published articles in the last week claiming that beef will see significant price rises in the coming weeks due to low numbers and a significant increase in beef consumption among the British public.
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Arthur
Well-Known Member
No surprise from the latest get together.. https://www.agriland.ie/farming-new...g-ends-in-frustration-for-farm-organisations/
nashmach
Well-Known Member
Dont know why anyone persists with it.
muckymanor
Well-Known Member
Probably good expenses out of it if its facilitated by the government
ithastopay
Well-Known Member
A waste of money, at this point all beef processors, are also involved in finishing beef cattle, they know the costs involved better than many farmers, with this knowledge they also know, how much to pay to keep us at it.
Whenever possible, a buyer of any product will try to buy at the lowest possible price.
Pulling the price of beef, not just reduces the cost to the processor, it usually has the same effect on store cattle.
The cheaper the store today, the less they will have to pay for beef, when those come fit later in the year.
I’m of the opinion that price pull was carried out, in the hope that that some sort of payment (a winter finisher payment)
would be made available to winter finishers,
Dress it up with a nice title, include words, such as, sustainability, viable, seasonal, get it passed, money for the farmers, kudos for the farm organisation and the politicians, cheaper beef for the processors.
It mightn’t be too bad if they didn’t cap it as low as the last two years scheme.
Whenever possible, a buyer of any product will try to buy at the lowest possible price.
Pulling the price of beef, not just reduces the cost to the processor, it usually has the same effect on store cattle.
The cheaper the store today, the less they will have to pay for beef, when those come fit later in the year.
I’m of the opinion that price pull was carried out, in the hope that that some sort of payment (a winter finisher payment)
would be made available to winter finishers,
Dress it up with a nice title, include words, such as, sustainability, viable, seasonal, get it passed, money for the farmers, kudos for the farm organisation and the politicians, cheaper beef for the processors.
It mightn’t be too bad if they didn’t cap it as low as the last two years scheme.
Arthur
Well-Known Member
More money that will end up in the processors pocket despite being given to the farmer.
The beef processors are not forcing the ordinary beef farmers to pay ridiculous money for store cattle though to be fair lads. I tuned in to a few marts last week as I could do with a few more heifers for one block of ground, I need not have bothered with the money that ordinary cattle were making. I know the grass men are out in force at the moment getting their stock bought but surely people expect to at least break even on the cattle. In general, stores to beef is just not a viable business model at present, regardless of whether that is winter finishing or grass finishing, if it ever really was the last few years.
Let's look at this from a non farmer perspective, and a laissez faire one at that. (not my personal views, but a potential if somewhat cynical way of looking at all this)
Of all the meats, beef has the highest carbon footprint. That's an unpopular statement but it's factual. Not meeting our targets from the EU means more fines, so a loss of tax payers money from the local economy.
Next, we have the suggestion of a finishers payment. More tax payers money to prop up what people will begin to see as an unprofitable industry. None of this is going to be popular with John P Taxpayer.
Irish beef has a base price of around 3.70 a kilo. If we cross the English channel to La France, where the weather is better, the subsidies are largely the same, and the cost of land and other inputs is lower, the price of beef is 4.10 a kg.
Of all the meats, beef has the highest carbon footprint. That's an unpopular statement but it's factual. Not meeting our targets from the EU means more fines, so a loss of tax payers money from the local economy.
Next, we have the suggestion of a finishers payment. More tax payers money to prop up what people will begin to see as an unprofitable industry. None of this is going to be popular with John P Taxpayer.
Irish beef has a base price of around 3.70 a kilo. If we cross the English channel to La France, where the weather is better, the subsidies are largely the same, and the cost of land and other inputs is lower, the price of beef is 4.10 a kg.
muckymanor
Well-Known Member
If they are paying farmers 80% of what they are getting then how can the same factories owned by the same people pay up to 20% more for cattle in the north and in the UK? Reading through stiff on it today, its clear that mii just gave lip service. It was the same as saying "just get on with it lads, we don't give a fcuk about ye".
Arthur
Well-Known Member
More manipulation of the figures from an incomplete report to suit MII . https://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/grant-thornton-hits-obstacles-in-determining-beef-market-value/
People need protein and meat is protein. If meat is replaced by another protein what is its carbon footprint. The seas cannot produce any more fish and fish farming is environmentally unfriendly. So we are back to soya . We can forest down Ireland and rip up the Amazon and subsaharan Africa to grow Soya . Where are the 90 million Buffalo that were in the USA . Why should people on low income bear the cost of carbon readjustment. How many carbon producing Data centers were around in the last century.
Well chicken, lamb, pork and turkey off the bat would all have a lower carbon foot print. Very few people eat beef every day. Farming does carry a lot of bad rap it often doesn't deserve, and I'd be there to vouch for it often. Not everyone is going to look through it with the same perception as you would, nor indeed as I would. Hence why you'll note I said it wasn't my personal views. I enjoy a steak as much as the next man if not more.
It doesn't matter what you think, or what I think, it will be what others think. A vocal, if misinformed minority is winning the information war and as a community, we (farmers) have yet to counter it. Throw in an economic argument and we've a bigger tide to turn. Who'd have thought in the 70s that Maggie would have sold the coal miners down the river. When push came to shove she did.
That was my reason for outlining an argument against a finishing payment, irrespective of what it does or does not do for farming, it has the potential for significant negative press.
The processors know how little they can get away with giving, as outlined in a post above. Before long they'll have absorbed the benefits of any finishing payment that was to be had, so we're back to square one and now we have public resentment to deal with by people who will simply see beef farmers as free loaders.
Mf240
Well-Known Member
Lie down with your carbon footprint, man needs to eat he doesn't need to fly
Man does need to eat, he doesn't need to fly. Man does very much want to fly, and the man who spends more time flying will have more influence and therefore more sway than you or I with a few cattle.
Its not about how it is, its about how it looks. I'm not interested in a debate on the carbon footprint of beef farming, but if our only response is to ignore it, we're not in a good place.
We don't need finishing payments nor do we need veganism. We need a bigger slice of the existing pie.
marco
Well-Known Member
I would like to call bullshit on your highest carbon emissions from beef statement. There is no allowance given for the carbon the grass and clover take out of the atmosphere. Cattle aren't alchemists they don't create carbon. Your statement is the biggest set of lies that keeps being regurgitated by so called educated people from all walks of life. Some of the carbon is excreted in dung some is retained as body mass and some is left back out where it came from originally, the atmosphere.
If all animal numbers all over the world remained static and there was no human activity would the carbon ppms be rising like they are?
Same old bullshit, OPEC produce oil. We get punished for the emissions, Russia produce fertiliser, we get punished for the emissions. We produce beef for export, we get punished for the emissions.
Some fucking idiots in power are away with the fairy's. And people have heard it repeated so many times they believe it
Again, when the processors absorb that subsidy, what good is that?
I'd be a believer in CAP as a means of what it was intended to do - ensure a constant supply of high quality food, and protect against weather related and other market shocks, not to solve imbalances in the market.
That's not quite the process.
CO2 is taken in by grass. Cattle take in the grass, among which is CO2, and water , H2O.
CO2 + 2(H2O) >>> CH4 + O2 (Methane and oxygen)
Methane is a far more potent GHG than CO2. It contributes to the green house effect alongside CO2 in much the same manner, but pound for pound it is 28 times worse.
This is the reason why I am coming to the conclusion that the future of slurry is slurry dryers and AD. AD would means we could replace natural gas with biomethane, and as I posted last week, stop the talks of reducing the national herd because now they would be a part of the electricity supply. We would at least be getting rid of our CO2 emissions from gas, and as the reaction I posted above is reverseable, (I haven't done chemistry since I was in school so may be open to correction), that methane and oxygen would eventually change back into CO2 and water again, reabsorbed by the grass, and the cycle begins again.
Anyways, all that is irrelevant, the crux of what I was getting at is the fact the French farmers get 10.81% more than we do. Why don't we focus on why we are being dry rode by the processors instead of trying to prove the scientists wrong.
