Irish Beef vs Mercosor Beef

realitykeeper · 18-09-2019 5:51am

Danzy wrote: »

Your the fellow who has this bizarre ideas about Dutch farming being transferred here but who had no idea about Dutch farming or here for that matter I knew I recalled your name.

Carry on.

It is more to do with attitude to be honest. Somehow I doubt half of Ireland would covered in weeds and depending on handouts if it was occupied by the Dutch instead of the Irish. Even this biodiversity spiel seems rather thin when it comes from Irish farmers because they seem to think biodiversity is about taken handouts and doing nothing. I rarely see any effort to re establish a native deciduous forest or re establish wetlands. Instead I see endless fields of weeds.

realitykeeper · 18-09-2019 5:58am

endainoz wrote: »

I take it very seriously, so do all the people protesting. I do more for the environment than most and definitely more than someone who doesn't farm, try not to choke on your avacado toast.

If you are protesting beef prices, why not demand lower prices so that the Brazilians would find beef farming less lucrative. Demanding higher prices will mean the Brazilians can up their prices too and what better motive to destroy another million acres of rain forest. If you really care for the environment and you are wedded to beef (cause it is easy and requires no effort) you should demand the processing plants pay you less.

Donald Trump · 18-09-2019 9:02am

realitykeeper wrote: »

If you are protesting beef prices, why not demand lower prices so that the Brazilians would find beef farming less lucrative. Demanding higher prices will mean the Brazilians can up their prices too and what better motive to destroy another million acres of rain forest. If you really care for the environment and you are wedded to beef (cause it is easy and requires no effort) you should demand the processing plants pay you less.

Username doesn't check out

18-09-2019 9:38am

This is what the Brazilian meat companies were doing just 2 years ago

Have you heard about the shocking rotten meat scandal that’s shaking the Brazilian society and economy this week? Over the weekend, Brazilian police unveiled an investigation exposing systemic bribing of Brazilian meat inspectors by major meat-packing companies (some of them top global companies) to conceal dirty meat by paying them to issue false “fit-to-eat” certifications.

Details emerging from the investigation include practices such as adding chemicals to meat to conceal rotting odor, adding pigs’ heads to sausages and adding cardboard to processed poultry as filler. Some families are afraid to eat the meat in their freezers. Local press is also reporting that Brazil’s former agriculture minister admitted to caving into political pressure to appoint a livestock superintendent who would support the rotten meat cover-up scheme.

No thanks.

onetimecypher · 18-09-2019 10:10am

Strawberry Milkshake wrote: »

This is what the Brazilian meat companies were doing just 2 years ago

No thanks.

Eat irish horses instead

endainoz · 18-09-2019 10:40am

Boards is unfortunately full of nut job trolls, time to unfollow. I suggest ye do the same lads.

Outlaw Pete · 18-09-2019 11:01am

onetimecypher wrote: »

Eat irish horses instead

There's a guy in the Temple Bar market most Saturdays that sells Horse meat Burgers, could never bring myself to eat the stuff.

I think karma would see that I never picked a winner again.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/horse-going-down-well-in-dublin-city-centre-1.1314471

gozunda · 18-09-2019 11:05am

realitykeeper wrote: »

Yes but most of that land would be fine for forestry which is another area Irish farming needs to expand into. You may not realize it but Mercosor is not the biggest threat to beef farming. Artificial meat is becoming a reality and in the near future it will be cheaper and safer than meat from animals. Time for Irish agriculture to move on.

realitykeeper wrote: »

That is one way of looking at it. I prefer the Dutch idea of using the land. Ireland is an embarrassment quite frankly, we have so much land which is not used or even properly designated.

realitykeeper wrote: »

You are not a good listener I did not suggest you give up farming. I suggested you take it seriously.

realitykeeper wrote: »

Yes, they take what they do seriously. I think Irish farmers should get serious too. Hard work really isn`t so terrible, you should give it a try. I`d bet you`d surprise yourself.

realitykeeper wrote: »

It is more to do with attitude to be honest. Somehow I doubt half of Ireland would covered in weeds and depending on handouts if it was occupied by the Dutch instead of the Irish. Even this biodiversity spiel seems rather thin when it comes from Irish farmers because they seem to think biodiversity is about taken handouts and doing nothing. I rarely see any effort to re establish a native deciduous forest or re establish wetlands. Instead I see endless fields of weeds.

Hold up lads. Realitykeeper (sic) is obviously the boards resident agricultural expert. Not only does he know more than all the kids in the department of agriculture and Teagasc with regards to production and farming - he knows more than any other farmer in the country as well!

So the future is:

* High input hot house horticultural production involving huge amounts of energy, artificial fertilisers and pesticides

*Forestry wherever there isnt intensive covered production.

* Cheap and nasty higly procesed fake 'meat'

Yup sounds just the kind of thing we need for sure ...

:cool:

jam_mac_jam · 18-09-2019 11:09am

I would prefer Irish beef to ****ty beef full of hormones from third world countries when I live up the road from some of the best beef in the world. I would gladly pay for the better quality. You can keep your crappy thai chicken as well.

Eric Cartman · 18-09-2019 1:08pm

gozunda wrote: »

Hold up lads. Realitykeeper (sic) is obviously the boards resident agricultural expert. Not only does he know more than all the kids in the department of agriculture and Teagasc with regards to production and farming - he knows more than any other farmer in the country as well!

So the future is:

* High input hot house horticultural production involving huge amounts of energy, artificial fertilisers and pesticides

*Forestry wherever there isnt intensive covered production.

* Cheap and nasty higly procesed fake 'meat'

Yup sounds just the kind of thing we need for sure ...

:cool:

Sounds like dystopian hell

realitykeeper · 18-09-2019 5:30pm

rocksolidfat wrote: »

Holy christ that lad's posting history is a treasure trove, I must be losing my marbles because it seems the Magdalene Laundries were also a good thing, if they came back women would need them, and well... they're better than the hell all these women are going to anyway, so that's got to be a positive.

I sh*t ye not!

Quotes from different threads are inadmissible and are therefore verboten. I shall report you for that and thank you not to blaspheme again.

realitykeeper · 18-09-2019 6:00pm

gozunda wrote: »

Hold up lads. Realitykeeper (sic) is obviously the boards resident agricultural expert. Not only does he know more than all the kids in the department of agriculture and Teagasc with regards to production and farming - he knows more than any other farmer in the country as well!

So the future is:

* High input hot house horticultural production involving huge amounts of energy, artificial fertilisers and pesticides

*Forestry wherever there isnt intensive covered production.

* Cheap and nasty higly procesed fake 'meat'

Yup sounds just the kind of thing we need for sure ...

:cool:

I would be surprised if farmers still think they were well advised by the Dept and by Teagasc.

I suspect you would have a higher regard to authority than would I.
The experts who ran our financial institutions and brought the country to the verge of bankruptcy should have made an impression on us all.

I would advise farmers to think for yourselves.

Final point, hard work is not just physical. It includes things like diligence research and planning. As for physical labour, I promise you will feel much better for it. Hard work is nothing to be afraid of. It really isn`t.

gozunda · 18-09-2019 7:27pm

realitykeeper wrote: »

I would be surprised if farmers still think they were well advised by the Dept and by Teagasc.

I suspect you would have a higher regard to authority than would I.
The experts who ran our financial institutions and brought the country to the verge of bankruptcy should have made an impression on us all.

I would advise farmers to think for yourselves.

Final point, hard work is not just physical. It includes things like diligence research and planning. As for physical labour, I promise you will feel much better for it. Hard work is nothing to be afraid of. It really isn`t.

Lol. You teach your grandmother how to to suck eggs as well?

Ps. I have a spare shovel for you whenever you are ready to put your money where your mouth is and get digging.

Danzy · 18-09-2019 7:45pm

realitykeeper wrote: »

Final point, hard work is not just physical. It includes things like diligence research and planning. As for physical labour, I promise you will feel much better for it. Hard work is nothing to be afraid of. It really isn`t.

Lol.

You surely must be trolling.

realitykeeper · 18-09-2019 9:25pm

gozunda wrote: »

Lol. You teach your grandmother how to to suck eggs as well?

Ps. I have a spare shovel for you whenever you are ready to put your money where your mouth is and get digging.

It`s a big country, and I have a spare shovel too.

Danzy · 18-09-2019 9:26pm

realitykeeper wrote: »

It`s a big country, and I have a spare shovel too.

In good condition and not a callus on the hand.

markodaly · 19-09-2019 2:50pm

eeeee wrote: »

Rural Ireland is dying in vast swathes of the country, and the beef crisis is part of it.

Doesn't that point to real systemic issues with lots of framing in Ireland?
Its dying because the old model is outdated and has only lasted this long becomes of large subsidies.

I suppose we need a rethink of what we are going to do with rural Ireland.
Do we need to farm every single acre of it?

RTE have an interesting article about the future of foresty.
https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2019/0917/1076425-ireland-forestry-22-million-trees-a-year/

Not a fan of the non-native spruce myself, but we should definitely try and reforest whole swathes of the countryside with native indigenous trees, return the countryside back to its natural habitat, which we have very little off.
The best land we can still use for dairy/beef/whatever is still viable, but there are lots of acres out there that is not worth saving or planting.

Outlaw Pete · 19-09-2019 3:52pm

jam_mac_jam wrote: »

I would prefer Irish beef to ****ty beef full of hormones from third world countries when I live up the road from some of the best beef in the world. I would gladly pay for the better quality. You can keep your crappy thai chicken as well.

I agree but Ireland needs to try and ensure that better quality remains a priority, as for sure there are some that let the side down in that regard, and I'm not blaming farmers necessarily or at least not all of them, as I get there is temptation there to produce a lower quality product when you're struggling to keep things afloat.

It's something I think we're uncomfortable talking about as a society as the quality of Irish beef, with images of Irish cows in the greenest of pastures is right up there with the Cliffs of Moher as a Bord Failte selling point.

I've noticed though, that Irish beef in certain supermarkets tends to be consistently very poor quality. Even high price cuts of beef will often be anemic looking, grey marbling and tough to eat. Super Valu is always excellent and so supermarkets-wise, I tend to stick with them, but if I can at all, I'll buy from butchers I know always have very good beef.

I seem to recall this being raised in the dail a few years ago, not sure by whom, but they were trying to raise awareness about how some farmers were damaging the reputation of Irish beef by doing whatever it is that they were doing. Again, understand the temptation to do whatever it takes to make sure you're turning a profit but personally I don't mind paying that extra but to ensure the beef is as good a quality as it can be, and indeed often do.

eeeee · 19-09-2019 8:29pm

markodaly wrote: »

Doesn't that point to real systemic issues with lots of framing in Ireland?
Its dying because the old model is outdated and has only lasted this long becomes of large subsidies.

I suppose we need a rethink of what we are going to do with rural Ireland.
Do we need to farm every single acre of it?

RTE have an interesting article about the future of foresty.
https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2019/0917/1076425-ireland-forestry-22-million-trees-a-year/

Not a fan of the non-native spruce myself, but we should definitely try and reforest whole swathes of the countryside with native indigenous trees, return the countryside back to its natural habitat, which we have very little off.
The best land we can still use for dairy/beef/whatever is still viable, but there are lots of acres out there that is not worth saving or planting.

I think we really need to think about what makes land valuable - is it just productivity? Or is it natural beauty, culture, social history, archeological and environmental value etc.
Saying we plant all marginal land is a huge, huge, huge mistake. There is so much local and social history bound up in land, so much culture. We have 20 acres we can't farm at home, it's full of native shrubs, bushes, trees etc. The biodiversity there is unreal. We have an awful lot of ditches and old pasture too, that once ripped up for forestry or reseeded is irreplaceable. Famine houses, full fiachras, a famine road, a few fairyforts (in fairness they're everywhere!) There is fcuk all of that kind of diversity in the golden vale.
The only reason we've been able to keep the history and biodiversity on our farm is beef farming. Lose that and you lose so, so much with it.
I also see my father, who was born and reared on that land, and his father was a tenant on it before he got it off the land commission, knows where all the shores and drains are/should be, so when the council resurface the road he goes around telling them what to not block etc. When the don't listen roads flood, get torn up because of blocked shores etc.
Once you plant land there's no going back. Without significant investment in it its destroyed for any other use.
I have absolutely no appetite for more monocultural sika spruce plantations.

Land is more than just a carbon sink, and needs to be understood for what it is in its entirety.

markodaly · 20-09-2019 7:50am

eeeee wrote: »

I think we really need to think about what makes land valuable - is it just productivity? Or is it natural beauty, culture, social history, archeological and environmental value etc.

I think we can agree on the subjective at least.
Land should not all be about productivity, so why are we subsidising farms that are and will never be either self-sustaining or profitable?

Saying we plant all marginal land is a huge, huge, huge mistake.

Not really saying all, but there is a case to be made to return, lots of unproductive, marginal land back to its natural Irish woodland type habitat.

Once you plant land there's no going back. Without significant investment in it its destroyed for any other use.

I think that is the point of it really, besides recreational perhaps. One could develop natural woodlands, bordering a greenway, with some walks, that communities can enjoy.

As you said, why does it have to be productive as in has to be farmed?

I have absolutely no appetite for more monocultural sika spruce plantations.

I tend to agree. I would rather create proper national parks, full of native indigenous Irish trees, plants, bushes, shrubs, birds and animals.

Irish Beef vs Mercosor Beef

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