Beef Plan Movement (READ OP BEFORE POSTING)

CloughCasey1

Buford T. Justice V wrote: »

When the Shorthorn replaced the native breeds as the main dairy breed, farmers were complaining about how this would hurt the quality of the beef animal.


When the Friesian replaced the Shorthorn as the main dairy breed, farmers were complaining about how this would hurt the quality of the beef animal.


When the Holstein replace the Friesian as the main dairy breed, farmers were complaining about how this would hurt the quality of the beef animal.


Now, a small quantity of Jersey bulls are used across a small number of herds and, again, farmers are complaining about how this will hurt the quality of the beef animal.


Time and breeds move on, markets change and farmers adjust their management to utilise the animals available to suit the markets available.


It's what has always happened and what will always happen. Life goes on and people still manage to survive.

What about the bulls that sling calves as big as cats? That is what improvement in genitics and science has brought. Aax/lmx on the card but they may as well be jex. Doesnt matter what cow they come out of.

CloughCasey1

wrangler wrote: »

Is there room for imrovement in beef/lamb price, It's a luxury meat now and cannot compete with pork and chickhen.
Anytime I get a chance to go through ICM I cannot help but admire the effort they make to market our lamb, the different products they make and the amount of investment in further processing the lamb

The price will always be a supply and demand problem same with any industry. But fair play on grading and fat score can take 50 euro off the price of a carcass no matter what the base price is. We will always be caught on price. But if we got fair play in the factories that way and could somehow get rid of the factory feedlots then we would have at least fair play on the price front.

cute geoge

CloughCasey1 wrote: »

What about the bulls that sling calves as big as cats? That is what improvement in genitics and science has brought. Aax/lmx on the card but they may as well be jex. Doesnt matter what cow they come out of.

This is a problem with exported fr bull calves as well ,some of these x bred fr bull calves turning into runts once they are weaned off milk .It seems to be turning into a problem in the feedlots where they end up ,the margins in these feedlots are tight as well!!!

Buford T. Justice XIX

CloughCasey1 wrote: »

What about the bulls that sling calves as big as cats? That is what improvement in genitics and science has brought. Aax/lmx on the card but they may as well be jex. Doesnt matter what cow they come out of.

Face it, the majority of beef in the country is a commodity.



Outside of HEx and AAx, where is the premium paid by the consumer on suckled beef?



The most purchased meat in supermarkets and butchers is mince and let's face it, Jex, Frx or Lmx would put out the exact same end product.

coolshannagh28

Outside of the export market to the continent for the top of the weanlings suckler beef is just a commodity for the processors ,steaks too big for packaging and beef is sold cheaply in UK retailers while Red Tractor branded products are commanding a premium there.

K9

Keepgrowing wrote: »

So, you only want to alienate the larger dairy farmers. I rent land but not at “silly” money, I haul silage 30km and you know who’s land it’s coming off? It’s drystock farms, ones with enough wit to see where their bread is buttered.

We have offered all of our spring ‘19 calves to 3 calf buyers for a nominal fee of €30/head. That’s for fr bulls, He heifers and bulls but guess what? They’ve all declined. The simple fact is they can pick up “runners” now for €300, can’t say I blame them. There’s an over supply of cattle and further subs will only exasperate this.

Tell me this what’s the cost of keeping an 800 kg cow that produces 1 calf every 27 months? Just the cow

Tell me what’s your definition of a factory farm?

Tell me why you think there’d no money in contract rearing?

Tell me is every beef farmer good enough at their job to rear another’s stock?

What’s your plan for the calves next spring?
This is the first year since spring 13 that silage is been sold above cost of production. Even up to few months ago lads were practically boasting about buying in dry cow silage for below cost of production. I’ve no problem with farmers selling silage but what are they going to do when the demand isn’t their for silage.

memorystick

I went to the Beef Plan meeting last night. I didn't realize that there was so much regulation re exports and slaughter hall. Also, I knew that the IFA were/are useless but I didn't that they can be as bad as they are currently are. I wasn't impressed with all the talk about producer group. Every farmer is different. Here's to a price rise of some nature.

charolais0153

memorystick wrote: »

Also, I knew that the IFA were/are useless but I didn't that they can be as bad as they are currently are.

Explain?

Bass Reeves

memorystick wrote: »

I went to the Beef Plan meeting last night. I didn't realize that there was so much regulation re exports and slaughter hall. Also, I knew that the IFA were/are useless but I didn't that they can be as bad as they are currently are. I wasn't impressed with all the talk about producer group. Every farmer is different. Here's to a price rise of some nature.

Why were you not impressed with the talk about producer groups

Bass Reeves

Here is another loads of Codswallop from some old fart who si more than likly 10 years behind the game.

https://www.independent.ie/business/farming/beef/factories-must-pay-more-for-top-grades-insists-expert-37545274.html


He is on about lean meat yield and the grid. In the grid he is saying that the difference between U grade and O garde cattle is 29c/kg. Now on the grid the gaps are if cattle are QA are

O- to U- is 54c/kg
O= to U= is 42c/kg
O+ to U+ is 42c/kg.

The only reason the difference may be lower than the grid is U grade cattle are out of spec and you do not have the equal volumes in the higher parts of the U grade. He is comparing Apples and Oranges. It really fighten's me the way some lads are carrying on at present with plans to try totally f@@k up the half profitable part of the beef industry to try to say a part that no matter what happens will decline anyway

yewtree

I went to one of the meetings in the west last week. massive crowd in fairness and definitely the angriest meeting I have been at. The cause of the angry from what I could see where the beef price, factories, icbf, teagasc and any dairy farmer that expanded with a particularly dislike for any one that was using jersey blood.
Listening to the speakers the whole idea is to increase the value of suckler progeny and devalue the animal from the dairy herd.
It will be interesting to see will they achieve anything when push comes to achieve

patsy_mccabe

Panch18

Sucklers are a totally inefficient form of farming, anything that needs a hectare to bring a calf to 9 months of age can’t be anything but inefficient

The problem that dairy has is that it started to go down the jersey route - if teagasc had the foresight to push British friesan as the breed to base the grass based milk production around then we could have had top class dairy and a calf that is more than good enough for beef farmers to work with

Bass Reeves

Panch18 wrote: »

Sucklers are a totally inefficient form of farming, anything that needs a hectare to bring a calf to 9 months of age can’t be anything but inefficient

The problem that dairy has is that it started to go down the jersey route - if teagasc had the foresight to push British friesan as the breed to base the grass based milk production around then we could have had top class dairy and a calf that is more than good enough for beef farmers to work with

I agree with the first part about sucklers. Not only that most lads on about suckler have no clue about figures. If the grid gap went from 6-10c/kg the difference on suckler steers would be immaterial and if a 380 kg weight limit came in suckler farmers would lose more than they gained. A 30c/kg price rise is 120 euro on a 400kg animals it will not make unprofitable system sustainable. Unless we go 50c/kg above the highest beef price in Europe suckler are unsustainable

In the seventies in Kerry there was a huge amount of hill sheep. In the 80's and 90's a lot of these were replaced with suckler cows. In a lot of area's where sucklers are now hill sheep may be more sustainable to draw payments.

However I am not totally convinced about the Jersey issue. It is over stated as an issue. First off it si only a 50% cross at most and then lads cross back. More of an issue is ICBF have not much data on beef prodgnery from dairy sires. We need more data to encourage dairy farmers to use the right beef sires that will produce easy calving bulls who's prodgney will have a high growth rate. This can be carried out by genetic testing of these bulls to cull low growth rate, poor terminal weight ( not really an issue if you have a high growth rate) and hard calving bulls and long gestation bulls

In the US and Canada there is a move to hybrid bulls that are 50% AA or HE and 50% Continental breeding with the emphais on low birth weights and high growth rates. In Ireland we need to carry out similar evaluation on beef sires there would be no need of hybrid breeding in bulls but the selection of bulls accross breeds for the above traits

memorystick

Bass Reeves wrote: »

Why were you not impressed with the talk about producer groups

Because not everyone has the same cash-flow or payments plan. I'm lucky in that I can pay within a week or on the day. Also, the problem isn't buying 10 10 20. it's selling the beef at a very poor price when its European equivalent is getting a better price.

memorystick

charolais0153 wrote: »

Explain?

The speaker said that an IFA man was involved in the design some beef programme (Genotics or something else) and signed off on it. Maybe it was the 5 Star thing.

tanko

They're having a meeting in the Cavan Crystal Hotel at 8.30 this evening.

Base price

yewtree wrote: »

I went to one of the meetings in the west last week. massive crowd in fairness and definitely the angriest meeting I have been at. The cause of the angry from what I could see where the beef price, factories, icbf, teagasc and any dairy farmer that expanded with a particularly dislike for any one that was using jersey blood.
Listening to the speakers the whole idea is to increase the value of suckler progeny and devalue the animal from the dairy herd.
It will be interesting to see will they achieve anything when push comes to achieve

The last time we went to the Ploughing Championships (2016) I noted that when visiting the Bord Bia stand they were promoting Friesian carcasses as the most suitable for the export trade - there was a fine FR bullock on the stand. I've previously posted about it.

Anyway the Irish dairy herd has increased substantially since the abolition of quotas and we are now heading to a critical mass vis a vie livestock per ha & nitrates regulations. A substantial number of Irish dairy herds have been claiming degoration for years.

gerryirl

Bass Reeves wrote: »

Here is another loads of Codswallop from some old fart who si more than likly 10 years behind the game.

https://www.independent.ie/business/farming/beef/factories-must-pay-more-for-top-grades-insists-expert-37545274.html


He is on about lean meat yield and the grid. In the grid he is saying that the difference between U grade and O garde cattle is 29c/kg. Now on the grid the gaps are if cattle are QA are

O- to U- is 54c/kg
O= to U= is 42c/kg
O+ to U+ is 42c/kg.

The only reason the difference may be lower than the grid is U grade cattle are out of spec and you do not have the equal volumes in the higher parts of the U grade. He is comparing Apples and Oranges. It really fighten's me the way some lads are carrying on at present with plans to try totally f@@k up the half profitable part of the beef industry to try to say a part that no matter what happens will decline anyway

to put this into reality. I bought a aax , the x was a friesian cow off the brother in law who's dairying. He was a big tank of a thing. I killed him a 22 months and got 4.37 a kilo. 4.10 base, 12 cent Bord Bia and 15 cent for AA

Flipside. I killed 2 top quality lim with a BB cross Id say. u= both of them. 3.70 base. 12 cent and 18 cent on the grid.

Timing was everything. I just got lucky with the aax lad. it was the best price per kilo I got this year and i had a good few U's

wrangler

memorystick wrote: »

I went to the Beef Plan meeting last night. I didn't realize that there was so much regulation re exports and slaughter hall. Also, I knew that the IFA were/are useless but I didn't that they can be as bad as they are currently are. I wasn't impressed with all the talk about producer group. Every farmer is different. Here's to a price rise of some nature.

I suppose I've seen it all before when ICSA reformed, the emotion and the enthusiasm, you think it's all going to change,
It's hard not to be cynical.....
.After all there's already three organisations in an effort for better beef prices....if these new guys are the holy grail where have they been up to now, where were they in 2013 when there was a protest in the middle of Ireland beside ratheniska in Tullamore....about twenty five turned up, at least two were sheep farmers, rest were mostly dairy farmers or from Farm Centre.
It's hard not to be cynical
Producer groups have a place and they work, but they take work and not many will put in that work. I've been selling lambs through a group for 30 - 40 years so can't give it any thing but praise

Bass Reeves

memorystick wrote: »

Because not everyone has the same cash-flow or payments plan. I'm lucky in that I can pay within a week or on the day. Also, the problem isn't buying 10 10 20. it's selling the beef at a very poor price when its European equivalent is getting a better price.

Producer groups as in the EU plan was for the marketing of cattle rather than what you are and maybe some BP people are talking about which are purchasing groups. As I have siad before A better price will not make any difference to a suckleer farmer unless he is inherently profitable already.

Bass Reeves

gerryirl wrote: »

to put this into reality. I bought a aax , the x was a friesian cow off the brother in law who's dairying. He was a big tank of a thing. I killed him a 22 months and got 4.37 a kilo. 4.10 base, 12 cent Bord Bia and 15 cent for AA

Flipside. I killed 2 top quality lim with a BB cross Id say. u= both of them. 3.70 base. 12 cent and 18 cent on the grid.

Timing was everything. I just got lucky with the aax lad. it was the best price per kilo I got this year and i had a good few U's

That is immaterial to average UvO prices as all cattle are killed all year around which I think the ex teagasc advisor was talking about.

patsy_mccabe

A miserly tiny mention on page 9 of this weeks journal. It would make you wonder, wouldn't it?

TITANIUM.

patsy_mccabe wrote: »

A miserly tiny mention on page 9 of this weeks journal. It would make you wonder, wouldn't it?

It would indeed.

patsy_mccabe

TITANIUM. wrote: »

It would indeed.

Any reports back on last night?

patsy_mccabe

Cut and pasted from the Beef Plan WhatsApp group;

Meat Industry Ireland chief reacts to Beef Plan Group tonight Thursday 22 of December on FarmLand at 8:00pm

So go onto the website and watch the video live on your phone or computer

https://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/agriland-launches-farmland/

gerryirl

Bass Reeves wrote: »

That is immaterial to average UvO prices as all cattle are killed all year around which I think the ex teagasc advisor was talking about.

true .. its not immaterial to my pocket though..lol

nhg

Kilkenny Beef Plan Information Meeting:
Wednesday 28th November, 8.00pm at Newpark Hotel, Kilkenny
All Welcome.

Hurling Hereford

pat73 wrote: »

I just saw an ad for this Beef plan,40,000 farmers needed,10 euro membership,It says This is a voluntary,not for profit organisation.If they get the 40,000 members at 10 euro a head thats 400,000 euro.Im not giving out about the ability of this organisation or the work thats going to be put in,but i would like to know what the break down of where or who gets that money,before i join up.

This organisation cannot survive without funding for God's sake. If they are serious about what they are doing, they'll need money for advertising, rental of venues, administration etc Have you never been a member of an organisation similar to this previously?

Hurling Hereford

patsy_mccabe wrote: »

Suckler bred stock not only kill out at a higher %, they also have higher meat to bone ratios. This isn't always reflected in the grid price. Believe me the beef barons don't want to see the end of the suckler cow either.

If the 'Beef Barons' don't want to see the end of sucklers, they'd better start paying farmers accordingly.