Beef General Thread

_Brian wrote: »

Surely its down to hard cash.. are they not afraid that the processors will stop collecting the money and handing it over to them !!
Unless I'm missing something huge (and it wouldn't be the first time ) is there not a conflict of interest in having the IFA depending on the processors to collect their money.

+1

Even the f**king beef crisis news report had to be commandeered by a dairy cow competition!!

"Sure it's the only show in town!!!!"

(As if we didn't already know).

onyerbikepat wrote: »

Don't care what anyone says, this all goes back to the horse-meat scandal.:mad:

Sure the nags were propping the whole thing up all along. 'A little bit of beef, a little bit of horse... oh what the hell.. a little more horse.. ' Sure l'd say there were burgers made that were only beef flavour.

If they were getting the horses for feck all, they could afford to give the beef lad more for his stock.

Hate to say it but we might have been better off if the lid was never blown off the whole thing.

Now both sectors are f**ked. With dairy going the way it is, and prime cattle at cow price, we'll see suckler cows being dumped at the side of the roads yet.

rangler1 wrote: »

We shouldn't ignore what Padraig browne (dunbia) said either, If we don't want to supply what the market wants, someone else will

IMO this present crisis is partly our fault for continuing to throw cattle at them with kill below 30K, like I stated if this was December the winter finishers would shut the doors and hold for 4/kg.

However this is all about trying to drop the store prices to get us to fill sheds this winter. It all right stating about supplying what the customer wants but the reality is that at less than 4/kg some one somewhere has to lose substandical money for even summer grazing to make money. For winter finishing to be viable it need to be well north of 4/kg for there to be a return.

Cattle and sheep are not pigs or chickens that can be efficiently fed grain to produce a product that customers can pay for. Pigs and chickens can convert feed at higher rates than 4-1. The most efficient cattle (quality contenintal bulls) convert at about 8-1 (while weanling bulls will convert at 4-1 this is short lived) and it moves up from there to where dairy bred cattle can be heading to 20-1. You then have to factor in killout way back on pigs and chickens to understand that someone somewhere has not done his research.

Horsemeat was a game changer , processors doing what they have been for30 years selling decent farmers, producing top quality product ,short. They should have been put out of business decades ago and at a minimum been punitively fined over horsemeat they have established an effective monopoly and Coveney the IFA etc turn a blind eye as they have skin in the game.
Major structural reform required across the industry debatable if it is possible particularly in the timeframe between now and the coming glut of dairy cross calves which the processors intend to finish

Couple of things on this


The first is the whole IFA collecting money tru factories, I don't see the problem with it, if IFA need say 1 million a year to run it and the collect 0.5m in annual subs and 0.5m tru factories - the only thing going to change if they stop taking it from factory cheque, they will have to take an extra 0.5m from actual subs each year in DD from bank. That's if we want an organisation like IFA to represent us and imo if we hadn't them the situation would be a lot worse as they would be no common gripe from farmers everyone would want something different + as a haulier said to me last nite when collecting some cattle tis a hell of a lot easier getting paid from monies stopped from cheque than looking for it direct.


Secondly what farmers need to be if felxable, not drastically changing systems every time the factories want something different, cause as some one else said as soon as they have everyone doing what they want they will change to goalposts. I know things are bad at the moment( I actually think now is a good time to buy cattle to have ready next Mar/April)
This spring I had bulls, heifers and some PB bulls for breeding


I was going to fatten all the bulls under 16 months old but as prices were bad..
Instead some were finished under 16 mths - the best of them
Some went of on the boat to the lads with the oil
Some went private to a finisher
Some are still here and will be killed in December


Heifers were all to be fattened as well
But some went off grass as stores at 2.15/kg
A fella took a fancy to 2 of the bbx so they went for breeding at more that they would have made fat for the factories and no age, QA, fat score cuts ect.


The PB bulls were all to go for breeding..
But with the bad prices and lads moaning about paying for a bull with bad prices - I just couldn't be listening to them - half went for breeding and the other half went up on a lorry to Italy at good money and some went on their holidays to lads that wanted bulls for a few weeks and are back now and now I have lads looking for a bull because his own bull is lame or hurt and they just need a working bull asap


Be flexable but don't drastically change youre system every time the factories demand it.




Will lads fills sheds hoping to make money this winter, of course they will - the biggest thing that will stop them is the banks mightn't give them the money if last years stocking loans of feed bills haven't been paid for yet.


Also I remember being at a farm walk maybe back in 2006 or 2007 - and it was after a bad spell of prices/price cuts like now- and a finisher I know of was telling his tale of woe, that he was after loosing E10,000 that winter - and I don't doubt that he did loose it, and all the talk was that no one was going to winter cattle ever again and that factories were a shower of **** , did they fill sheds again that winter, of course they did probably in the hope of making some of the money lost the year before back tis like one long expensive hand of poker..


I t goes in cycles
3 or 4 bad years and then 1 good year just to keep the hope that, like delboy, this time next year we will be rich from fattening cattle




As for the lads that think the soulution is to have cheap stores - I give up...