Beef strike II what's a fair base price for the Autumn for R=3= steers?

Having read the ministers open letter and after listening to his radio 1 interview this morning all I can say is these communications are not defusing the situation in fact its like throwing fuel onto the fire. Especially the wording of his last paragraph of his open letter and using words like "self harm" on the radio this morning its beggars belief. Both communications are not measured in anyway with having a poor choice of words. He would have been better off not issuing that letter.


I also picked up from the interview this morning that the processing plants in the UK needed to be Bord Bia certified. Have Bord Bia confirmed they have certified these?

bogman_bass wrote: »

On what grounds? Not getting what farmers want? That’s not why he’s there.

He is where he is today only for his father who was a good man, not like this yoke i know i went to school with him.

foundation10 wrote: »

I also picked up from the interview this morning that the processing plants in the UK needed to be Bord Bia certified. Have Bord Bia confirmed they have certified these?

All the UK plants accredited to Bord Bia are listed on their website. This was linked previously on this thread.

It's not unusual for Irish product to be packaged abroad and sent back for sale.

This happens with Irish butter and cheese..

High bike wrote: »

Incompetence and completely out of touch with the Dept he's supposed to be leading, and if he doesn't know it now he'll find out at the next election

Farmers have stumbled onto power , wildcat tactics and the ballot box next May will ensure the balance shifts .

alps wrote: »

Shift to where?

The many.

wrangler wrote: »

Whole mess was a joke, did you think that creed was going to start buying cattle, This was started with no plan and then you cajoled Creed into trying to sort an impossible mess, MII didn't want to be there at the weekend. It was the protesters not MII that abused Creed into getting involved
It was like a schoolyard and the bully calling for the headmaster.
It's farmers that'll be broke now BECAUSE OF THE PROTESTS not the factory owners, but what do you care, time to let people sell their cattle

You are totally wrong, incorrect , and blind Wrangler. The processors had a plan. After screwing finishers last winter they decided to screw store produce and summer grazer this summer. However they like the Minister, and all the boys in suits from Board Bia to farm organisations miss read this one. I am not blaming IFA, ICSA or ICMSA but a huge amount of disgruntled farmer went into the marts last winter on dark and wet nights. Meeting only stopped because cows were calving. Afterwards the boys in suits had a laugh and you belittled( I will not use another word) these farmers as well Wrangler and still do.

When this protest started the boys in suits miss read it. This sh!t of having meeting's running 18+ hours and bulling/cajoling inexperienced negotiater's just to get a deal so as to get lads off the picket. Then when it was settled MII trys to drop the base price again. F@@K that and that is what the protesters said and they blockaded them again. What did we get again another 18+hour session inexperienced negotiaters again bullied/cajoled into a deal and the lads in the suits clapping themselves on the back last Sunday morning.

The real question is how have long established farm organisations misread the mood. Is it partly because of the injunctions, The processors made a mistake there. Now we have a mess but the resposibility for it lies with the processors and the lads in suits

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

The problem is that far too many people have no idea of business outside the farm gate and greatly overestimate selling price and underestimate costs of doing business. The average retail price of beef is under €9/kg.

How many people on here have ever actually gone out and tried to get a product on a shelf and claim market share. It's not very easy at a small scale let alone trying to shift volume in a weak/flooded market

That is a man in suits answer to everything blame the market. Processors could not drop price fast enough in June. The big issue for the last 3-5 years in Beef in Ireland after the horse meat scandal and again we come back to that is that processors have manupilated the price by using feedlot and preferred suppliers deals. IFA in particular has ignored this and we have had former president's supporting this practice.

kerry cow wrote: »

it's coming soon that farmers will stop rearing cattle , stop making fat cats out of the merc pilots .
what are farmers to do .
farm for a loss .
maybe the ifa , creed and Teagasc , bord bia etc need to come clean .
tell the farmers there's no money in beef , get out before they go broke .
and the ifa can close shop .
Teagasc can go back into there cave .
bord bia won't be required any longer , thank God , talk about making a JOB for ones self ,
and creed should be voted out by the good people of cork .

This is what the boys in suits are missreading

Muckit wrote: »

The problem is that far too many factories have no idea of business inside the farm gate and greatly underestimate the time effort and money it takes to rear beef cattle. Its next to impossible to rear an animal to 30 mths and make a margin. The factory market price has plummeted to under €3 50/kg.

How many factory men on here have actually gone out and tried to make a living rearing beef cattle? It's not very easy. Not very easy at all.

That is where you are wrong Muckit. Processors know exactly. They have there own feedlots they have there costings there and all these cattle are produced at a loss to manipulate the market. ABP went into buying calves 3-4 years ago thinking they were paying too much for stores. They stayed at it for 4-8 months only. Dawn and the FJ were going to show us how to produce sucklers efficiently both were losing money before labour, and land rental costs were added into the system and that was at over 4/kg.

Believe you me they know they just do not give a f@@K. The minister now has a problem farmers have said enough is enough let the whole F@@King lot go down the toilet. The boys in suits can go down with us at this stage. All the lads that run business getting 20c/kg extra as well as the mills. merchants as well. Let the whole f@@king lot go down the toilet because at this stage there is nothing in it for the smaller lad working his ass off

handlemaster wrote: »

that's an old saying, I know your having a laugh. But a lot of people still believe this , they can't see past , in short, the past. The capital tied up in land would be better serviced invested in other ventures. Then it comes down to the old ... sure what else would I do .... ??? Lots of other things would be the reply. In fact, the haggling over prices is just a result of poor choices taken by people to pursue a career over which they have very little control on the return that they get.

Again another arm chair economist. at present about 1-2% of land is sold every year. If this doubled the price of land would collapse. Farmers are price taker. Wrangler in the last thread was on about soft seller. We had the present editor of the FJ using term like soft/hard sellers when he the beef prices before he was Editor. This was the lad that was going to go working for MII so just another suit. Hard selling my h@le we have to take a price but the margin in this has been eroded over the last 3-5 years.

At the end of the time we are now at an impasse. it was the processors that started it, its up to them to find a solution and its lies in the base price. The boys rest of the boys in suits should be telling them that

yewtree wrote: »

I see people putting pictures up on social media of empty shelves on supermarkets, where beef should be and suggesting this is progress. I cannot get my head around such stupidity.
Beef is under constant scrutiny and most of its negative the idea that taking it off shelves to push people towards other products is going to help farmers is mind boggling.
If irish processors cant fill contracts in the uk it will be sourced somewhere else. There comes a point where farmers protesting are cutting off their nose to spite their face

Its immaterial to farmers , like many you fail to understand it is a processor/retailer issue to solve now not a farmer issue.

Someone needs to take hold of the situation. Shows what a joke the political set up is in this country they still on fukn holidays. I think lads at the gate should accept a base price of 3.75 for 3 months. Let the factories give this while reviews are on going in the background. If factories are unwilling to set a base price of 3.75 then we are ****ed.
Stop the ****e acting with stopping sheep being slaughtered. It would be much more beneficial to just blockade the marts and bring beef trade to a complete stop as the only one really suffering now is the lad at the end of the line in both sheep and beef.
Creed come out from behind the curtain and show some ****in respect to the people who have put you where you are today.

Bass Reeves wrote: »

You are totally wrong, incorrect , and blind Wrangler. The processors had a plan. After screwing finishers last winter they decided to screw store produce and summer grazer this summer. However they like the Minister, and all the boys in suits from Board Bia to farm organisations miss read this one. I am not blaming IFA, ICSA or ICMSA but a huge amount of disgruntled farmer went into the marts last winter on dark and wet nights. Meeting only stopped because cows were calving. Afterwards the boys in suits had a laugh and you have belittled( I will not use another word) these farmers.

When this protest started the boys in suits miss read it. This sh!t of having meeting running 18+ hours and bulling/cajoling inexperienced negotiater's just to get adeal to try to get lads off the line. Then when it was settled MII trys to drop the base price again. F@@K that and that is what the protesters said and they blockaded them again. What did we get again another 18+hour session inexperienced negotiaters again bullied/cajoled into a deal and the lads in the suits clapping themselves on the back last Sunday morning.

The real question is how have long established farm organisations misread the mood. Is it partly because of the injunctions, The processors made a mistake there. Now we have a mess but the resposibility for themess lies with the processors and the lads in suits

I can assure you I'm not the one that's blind, you've always been great on conspiracy theories. Everything now is based on conjecture, beefplan tried to organise their own slaughtering based on the same conjecture and failed miserably then blocked the ones that were doing it successfully.
IFA have got 100m for beef farmers plus protecting their BPS plus all the schemes, If non farmers knew what some ''real'' farmers were getting in the post in the next few weeks they wouldn't have a lot of sympathy but funnily that's not publicised but it's the reason that there's no money in beef, and rubbish calves are making uneconomical prices.
Guys around here are reducing numbers, contract rearing and milking for dairy farmers if they need the money, and beef farming if they don't

Robson99 wrote: »

Someone needs to take hold of the situation. Shows what a joke the political set up is in this country they still on fukn holidays. I think lads at the gate should accept a base price of 3.75 for 3 months. Let the factories give this while reviews are on going in the background. If factories are unwilling to set a base price of 3.75 then we are ****ed.
Stop the ****e acting with stopping sheep being slaughtered. It would be much more beneficial to just blockade the marts and bring beef trade to a complete stop as the only one really suffering now is the lad at the end of the line in both sheep and beef.
Creed come out from behind the curtain and show some ****in respect to the people who have put you where you are today.

No one is offering 3.75, and no one could guarantee a price at the moment for the 30th October
At the moment protesters are converting thousands of High quality lambs into poor quality mince

alps wrote: »

Shift to where?

The Greens

Danzy wrote: »

The Beef plan was the backlash, final roll of the dice.

If they can't divide the price in a reasonable way or can't afford to do so then the processors need to go, along with beef farming.

As is, the factories seem to not mind beef farming going to the wall, at the least they got a hop from this. If they had there way we'd be near to 3 a kg base.

Yet we don't see many of them calling up the Chinese for a buy out.

That doesn't change the point that a lot if people with Sucklers will have to change to dairy bred animals, and people will need to be extensive rather than intensive.

If people are doing things like 10,20 years ago them they are going to have serious problems.

I wouldn't like to tell you how many times I've changed farming system, I used to rear dairy beef and when teagasc started to promote it, the price of calves doubled in a couple years so then had to go on to sucklers, every time you change system there's a learning curve that costs money, I used to envy dairy farmers in their protected enterprise.
Processors will be needed no matter what way it goes, whatever their margin is it's the numbers that generate the huge profits

Any storm brewing at the ploughing ?
Have farmers protested at the retailers stands ?
Where are Independent Farmers Reps ??