whelan2 wrote: » One of our Angus bulls had a pig tail post wrapped in his ring this morning
Wait till they find out what eventually happens to a farm animal.
*little cuts. Snip. Snip. To an eventual conclusion.
Polled genetics will get a serious lift if that goes through.
Quote from the article - "Transport of animals will be a key component of the review. But an end to disbudding and dehorning cattle may also be proposed,"
"Horns belong to the cow; they are an essential part of the animal. Studies show that they are important not only for communication within the herd, but also for physical heat balance, digestion, and metabolism".
I presume debudding is OK
Yep same up north here, February was very false start to spring too, with cattle out and expecting them to stay out, didn't fully work out. Thank god the next 2 days should be super weather wise, and lift the spirits momentarily.
THAT'S what I thought, it was their ability to sow vast acreages that accrued the big payments. not their high entitlemments.
And they work hard for every bit of it
Lot of us around here in North West Cork thought we'd enough to do a fair bit of next winter.
Nope
The old area aid was 150/acre which is 375/ha which is the max it could be unless he stacked entitlements or kept cattle
If it cost 3% then farmers would start making their own again. It’s not that hard to make small amounts at home if you’re gonna save that much money and you have the raw material
Clear test thankfully. I can relax again for the time being although we got a letter from DAFM saying another neighbour in the area has gone down. I was talking to yet another neighbour and he reckons that we all might be facing more regular testing cause three farms in the locality have had positive tests.
I'd love to see it costing 3% of average incomes and I'm a consumer.
If everyone was average we'd all be walking on less than two legs.
Averages mean nothing, not everyone concentrated on maximising subsidie
My subsidies peaked at €900/ ha, my tillage subsidy was less than half that. €350/ha comes to mind
I'm not disputing the economics, I'm simply arguing with the OPs point.
"There would be fair whingeing if butter cost 3% of income today."
And there would be, from ALL consumers 🙂
Milk and beef is food. Why would you want to keep the value of your produce low so that the weekly shop will be a bit cheaper.
No they don't.
Farmers are now incredibly specialised.
One of Beef/dairy/sheep is the only produce on farms.
Unless the man milking 150 cows lives on a diet of nothing only milk he can never fully sustain himself.
I originally responded to a farmer who said "There would be fair whingeing if butter cost 3% of income today."
The farmer would also whinge about paying out 3% of his income on butter as he no longer produces it himself🙂
The farmer produces more food than they consume. That's the difference.
That screenshot is from the IFA. The organisation that you were a large part of.
In fairness.
Primary schools seem to be more hands on now in teaching students how to grow veg. I see more polytunnels at schools than there ever were.
There was a farmer beside us, had 40 acres, worked on BNM during the summer, grew everything in the garden and won prizes for the veggies.
4 sons left in the house, one gets carers allowance, one invalidity, one on rss and another on fas.
The garden now is a lawn, between mowing the lawn, footing turf and drawing bales the lads haven't time to do garden and it wouldn't pay.
Two of them have been prescribed excerscise, so have taken up walking.
In another fifty years either people will be fed in a tube or there'll be a famine
I wasn't trying to argue the source of affordable food, more making the point that farmers are also consumers of said food.
Long long gone are the days of self sufficient farmers where the wife makes butter and fattens a pig for the table etc.
Every farmers wife shops in Tesco or whatever supermarket is in town and is no different to any average "consumer".
And there was a lot more shops then too. Now there's a handful of multinational supermarkets who are gatekeepers between food and people.
It was good to see the supermarkets in front of that Dail committee this week, even thou they gave no real information. But at least the role of the supermarkets was acknowledged in the food chain. Most of the time the media and others think farmers are the only ones involved, despite our role being tiny (10-15% of product price?) compared to processors, supermarkets, marketing companies, transport, storage, admins/bureaucrats, etc.
Yes, but where does that cheap food comes from? Hint: It ain't the supermarket, like most consumers think.
The farmer is also a consumer who avails of cheap food.
Money was scarce and hard gotten up until the '70s, it's a different story now alright.
When you look at the cheap food policy over the last 50 years, even with the high prices the consumer was getting good value.
There would be fair whingeing if butter cost 3% of income today.
Tillage entitlements were never high per hectare, I used to have tillage in the 1990s and they were the lowest per ha payment on my farm. Converging won't affect tllage per Ha payment much, It's just the pure numbers of Ha's that's huge. There's some whinge from dairy farmers now and not a word outa them last year. High prices cure high prices and milk price went too high.
The food staples, ie , milk, butter and bread are ripping people off at the moment and there's huge whingeing from the consumers too.
It's every one for themselves now
I'm not a million miles from you SMN. I am sick to my guts of the whinging of the tillage sector. When they had monster entitlements and were snapping up every square inch of ground with this unfair advantage there wasn't a whisper from them. Now that the entitlements are converging and they have to stand on their own income its a different story from them here locally anyhow.
I see the tillage lobby in Ireland have beans and lupins (protein crops) not classed as tillage anymore to prove the tillage area is down in area to get what they wanted. They wanted a payment to lease land. The big bad narrative was the countries dairy farmers were taking all the land. Anyone in this part of the country sees more tillage. Latest epa figures on tillage area didn't even support their case. So the few in the lobby with ifj ran their own census. Biased of course and between late plantings and now protein crops excluded they've gotten the figures are back. So they've drilled the minister to give tax breaks to land owners who will only rent for tillage. Livestock on land excluded. I presume they've now gotten protein crops excluded as it's not tillage anymore either?
There's really some shower of See you next Tuesday's in this country in the lobby and they're doing everything they can to demonise and disadvantage other farming sectors with their paw out to the minister constantly. Poor feckers are living hand to mouth with thousands of acres.
Even see before a seed and fert rep whose also tillage on home farm say new aid should only go to established tillage farmers and not new entrants to the sector. Really the greedist See you next Tuesday's going.
For what? Beer, whisky and animal feed. The sooner the animal keepers wean their farms off cereals the better. Leave them with their Beer and whisky. And regenerative ads from the multinational Guinness with no regenerative about it. No Livestock as were the aims of the regenerative movement. That only leaves the use of glyphosate every year on the same ground and the greenwashing now that it's regenerating the ground through the antibiotic that is gly. But sure we're all happy campers now and saving the planet.
The BS continues unchecked.
Those figures could change slightly in about 10 days when the May evaluations come out.
Good man Patsy.
