Teagasc and IFJ have ye all driven mad with this early turnout lark. As long as I have been farming we are prepared for a 6 months winter. If it is shorter it is a bonus. Anyway fresh calved cows do better inside.
Ground certainly does dry faster this time of year. ya still need a bit f a prolonged spell. Last week some of my place was dried up fairly well (judging by walking across it). But the snow last Thursday night has the whole place swimming again. The water on top had gone and the top seemed to have recovered but it didn't take much to go back to square 1.
I've a section of one field by a whitethorn hedge that has a drain piped. And for the first time in my lifetime there's water lying all along it. And I can't explain it. The field it's in would be wet after lots of rain but dries fairly well. Plenty of pips under it. Main drain they all flow into is down and water flowing good. Only thing that seems different is the field next to it had maize in it last year and there's a pond of water just the other side of the hedge. That was never there either. I can't explain why it's after appearing like this when the main drain is fine and the water level is well below both fields.
That's a normal year in the southwest of the country. Ye have been spoiled up there for too long.
Nearly 12 hours of brightness now. Hopefully in 2 weeks things will be better.
You know, if you keep saying that it might eventually come true....
I've myself convinced that the ground dries out faster as we move into March. Any few dry days at all and they'll be out-out.
I've no uplifting words on silage quality or calves - sorry. Maybe more will do like @straight and keep the calves til they're 12 months? I'm guessing that could have several knock-on changes, up to and including cow type.
Only I grew an extra 200 ton of maize last year along with culling out alot of cows around Xmas I'd be in the same boat, was cursing the drian on cashflow last year growing maize but the way the springs went its saved us, in all fairness their needs to a 4 infront of milk prices come April for any hope of the job paying financially given the weather the past 9 months
It's a nightmare around here. On-Off grazing, silage quality, difficulty selling calves. Even the younger farmers are getting fed up with everything.
Processors hopes of milk volumes rebounding this year after 2023 I'd say are going up in smoke, forage quality simply isn't in the feed on alot of dairy farms to cope with little to no grazing in the diet
I m beginning to think that dawg is the only smart man on boards.trying to keep the show on the road with this weather in ireland since last July is a heartache
It's not far away that some farmers will get plenty land.the farmers mindset often is the biggest problem.
I’m not disagreeing with anything you said there but when I see likes of the rich businessmen buying land and local farmers falling out with each other just to rent it I think it’s stupid. If the owners were left to farm it themselves it might turn them off buying it.
i wouldnt say hes for the birds.... i know of a family around here that have have easily 2million spent buying land in the last 4/5years... and i have no doubt that the man in question didnt have to visit his local bank manager for a loan for any of it either... now the other side of that is his facilities wouldnt be anything to write home about.... grasstec wont be doing a video there anytime soon... but he is a good farmer and always has been... has a couple sons farming as well... but the likes of him are few and far between...
having said that i would also like to see Bass prove that there are farmers out there with millions built up....
Your for the birds with your ramblings, have you any factual proof theirs dairy farms with millions sitting in company bank accounts, from retained profits...
Your still reckoning the 20 cent a litre cop is actually correct
Farming investment is all about dry money ( savings) and opportunity. In a way if your father ( mother, uncle, aunt, grandfather, etc) have not bought land its unlikely out of farming income you will.
When buying land you have to forget abouts short-term ROI. It's a generational thing or definitely a 10-20 year investment before you start to see the benefits.
Actually running the sums on the Monoghan farm I reckon on investment need after purchase, beef outpreforms milk at present costs.
Mostly with few exceptions it people from a farming background that buy land. You will find most just look at it as a business decision. I do not totally buy the efficient way to transfer wealth. You can do that with any business nowadays its not just limited to farming.
The price of land is driven by retained profits in a company setting. Previously if you had ( after using your tax credits and 20% band) another 70-80k in profit you paid 35-40k in tax. Now you retain that within a company for the cost of 10-12k.
Because of a company format in such a situation you will not be spending money to avoid tax and even though you should not some may be not taking all there 20% allowance ( in reality 30% after prsi and USC) out of the company,maybe giving retained profits of 80-100k a year.
We are now 10 years post quotas so some mid sized farmers have build up war chests of a million or more.
Farming within a company setup is driving the price of land as much as anything. If you look at land prices small costs no longer make the significant premium over larger lots that they used to.
What alternative is their for lads that have significant mortgages to service on dairy infrastructure for x amount of cows needed to be milked to make intrest/capital repayments, loans have to be repayed....
10 years down the line when most units will have this debt payed off, you could see a serious cooling off in rental prices....
Their will be a inflection point, in the not to distance future when the current generation in their 60's farming with sons/daughters will retire/not be able to continue working at their current pace, the proverbial hits the fan then, as going out and trying to hire labour and probably having to pay 20 odd euro a hour for anyone half reliable/committed won't financially stack up....
In dairying cycles, we are at the sunset phase in Ireland, family labour on alot of units is masking the actual costs of production on farm, and when this pool of labour starts to disappear aging parents, successors having children alot later/and less off, the conveyor belt stops and all that unpaid family labour will have to be replaced with payed labour, our simply exit dairying/scale back numbers
In the UK they had been on about abolishing inheritance tax outright. No more inheritance tax for anyone, no catch to it.
if that was to have happened I would suspect land prices in the UK would have taken a sharp decline because wealthy people would no longer have needed to buy land to transfer their wealth to the next generation
in Ireland I think there should be some sort of system in place that you need to actually be a farmer to inherit land tax free, I’ve no idea how the system would work but it would make land affordable again for progressive farmers
Farmers are helping them buy it by paying high rents for the use of it.
Sleepless nights and long days. From what comes up on my Google feeds, it is business men that are investing spare money that are buying up a lot of land.
I know it's a lot of money at 40c a litre, but it's only one or two houses in the right district of a city. Or for a farmer with a few hovels over looking the sea down here.
A million ain't what it used to be unless you are working for it
One way or another I think it's nearly all non farming money around here that's invested in land. As you say kg the good days are gone
Just to give an idea of how dairy income has changed.
Load of ready-mixed our way today is 1350 euro including elevater.in 2017 it was 650
I remember getting over 200 pounds for fr bull calves.now I could sell 40 for 1000 euro
You could make a nice twist on a few culls one time if you fleshed them .now with stocking rate you re letting them off into a flush autumn market with very little value.
A drum of round up was always 60 to 100 euro now it's over 200
The winter dry off vacs and doses is running to nearly 50 euro a cow now.one time it was just 4 tubes and a dose
Tagging and testing calves and associated hassle.
Repairs and maintenance. Before a 1000 euro would get alot of repairs and maintenance to equipment,now every bill seems to be 5k
Nevermind fertiliser and ration basically doubling.to a certain extent milk price has risen to equal these buy it's all the extras eating into income and possible repayment capacity which has changed the scene on what was possible 10 or 20 years ago
I agree 100% with you. I suppose the thing is that land is such a good way to pass on wealth to the next generation and a lot of wealthy people just buy it for avoiding inheritance tax for their children. If land was only being paid for out of farm profits exclusively there wouldn’t be many places selling for €10K/acre
Grants are gone for milking equipment over 100 cows now anyway, which is worse overall as there still being a grant there for some means prices will still be higher than they should be
Not a chance of milking cows paying for those farms unless there's a considerable other operation helping to pay for it or a serious kitty built up during the good years.the glory days in cows are gone.its road or development money or non farmer will the meath one
You would still needs sheds and paddocks, possibly a roadway on part of it. Again grant would only cover part of it. The Monoghan farm would be preferable again with its sheds. With the cubicles and an milking parlour, cull cows would be a real option. Could you turn 50 culls a month out of the Monoghan farm.
If you had 1.4million it might stack up, borrowing a million paying back 75-80k/ year over 20 years.
I wonder would someone be able to make much money out of the 249 acre Meath farm if they just ran it as a drystock farm and fattened cattle on it?
if a guy borrowed a million euro to set up a dairy unit on it I think he’d have his fair share of sleepless nights trying to pay the money back!
Added the difficulty getting planning on a green field site. A neighbour took on a farm and it took a year and a half because of some objector 50 miles away
Big difference between 2&3 million. Below are the daft adverts for both farms
Other than the milking parlour the there is slatted cubicles for 150 cows, another slatted unit and an overground tank admittedly probably a bit dated.Hard to know there repair but they are there. It looks like it needs to be paddocked, a roadway and water to some extent as well. Land is unlikely to be anywhere as good as Meath. Extend the milking parlour to 20 either with a second hand unit or use the grant for a new one. A father and son ( young trained farmer) in a partnership woukd have 180k+vat to spend on infrastructure costing about 50k net. A herd of cows and it turning money straight away
However establishing a dairy operation on a greenfield site is a totally different ballgame. Ya everything will be spanking new, but beteween sheds, parlour, roadways fencing and water you would be looking at another million ++
With the Monoghan farm assuming it was 2million+ SD if you had half that and another 300k, borrowing a million for it might be doable.
The meath farm at million +SD would require you to have most of the price of it up front with thìe amount of infrastructure it needs and it would be 12+ months before you are turning money
Wouldn't fancy paying back 2 million from cows
Well the guide price for that farm was €2 million. After paying that much they’d want to be milking 140 cows or so anyway to get a return on their investment. Don’t think many places have 14 rounds of cows coming into their parlour anymore. I see second hand good sized parlours for sale on DoneDeal from time to time and they’re very affordable
