Beef, farming, rural Ireland...are their complaints legitimate?

The beef protest is not the only thing likely to end in tears.

riffmongous wrote: »

To some extent yeah, I'd rather see the farmers get the money than the factory owners. However once they start putting other ordinary workers out of a job then it gets a bit harder to stick by them..

There are 100k beef farmers in Ireland and half as many in related sector roles, more in the wider agri sector.

In terms of capital retained in the country, the agri sector leaves more in the Irish economy than Multi national sector does.

Aren't they also workers.

riffmongous wrote: »

I'm referring to the plant workers affected by the current shutdowns incase its not clear.

I'm aware of that.

riffmongous wrote: »

Then I'm afraid I didn't get your post

However once they start putting other ordinary workers out of a job then it gets a bit harder to stick by them......


To quote yourself.

The processing plant owners are millionaires who fill their plants with minimum pay foreign workers as a means of wage control, pay the farmers who breed and supply the beef peanuts and are trying to spin the media that they are the ones suffering. I'd say the complaints are legitimate enough.

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

In fairness do you think many Irish people would work in a meat processing plant these days?

If it paid a decent wage they would. I know a couple of butchers who started in processing plants.

Beef processors in general are not nice people, but the farmers here have mostly themselves to blame for their getting a historically raw deal - they don't really organise themselves en masse properly. Also, farms in this country are way too small to be properly viable in this day and age.

The one-off housing situation isn't going to work in the longer term either, right enough.

Chacha97 wrote: »

Just a thought, could the beef farmers be employed by the processors?
Like the processors buy the cattle, pay for the costs of reading them(feed etc) and employ the farmers with a salary to raise the cattle varying on the amount they can rear on their land? Granted they may not receive any grants personally anymore but they would would be in the same boat as receiving a salary as everyone else but still own their own land etc

Too expensive for the factory and would see a significant increase in food cost on the shelf.

People aren't willing to pay the cost of food as is, there would be some backlash to your proposals

Danzy wrote: »

I did, it used pay well, now it doesn't and the Labour have accommodation etc deducted as well.

You couldn't live on it.

Yes, lots of youngfellas (and not-quite-so-youngfellas) did it in the old days, the work was rather unpleasant but the wage was decent. All different now, mind.

Danzy wrote: »

If you eat grains or veg etc they are also subsidized, this is across the world.

People want cheap food and aren't willing to pay fair price, again this is global.

Politicians know that the one thing that always makes people angry is hunger, so cheap food has been a policy for decades.

No politician will stop subsidies because in fear of the electoral response. Let them eat cake.

To a degree it might not matter, with the Mercosour deal, the plan seems to be to reward Brazil and their fires in exchange for soya and beef.

If the same practices there were allowed here, I could readily beat Brazilian beef.

That means no environmental standards, no restrictions on medicine and growth hormones.

People don't want that, or more truthfully they do not want to see it. Better to reward economically and rail about it on t.v. but drive it on all the same.

Right but don't we export 90% of beef and dairy? If we only produced enough for our own people maybe propping them up wouldn't cost so much and it wouldn't be a problem.
I don't eat beef but I can never understand how a can of beer or a packet of asparagus costs the same as a steak. They require far less time and resources to produce. I think we just produce way too much of it.

markodaly wrote: »

There is a lot of talk about beef and the death of that industry in Ireland, but maybe they overplayed their hand and the market is shifting. If your product is solely relied on one market then perhaps you need to diversify in order to protect against external shocks.

There is not "one market", however the processors are a small number of wealthy companies that the farmer must deliver his product to. There is no real competition.

markodaly wrote: »

Farming, in general, has been doing very well, lately. Just ask the dairy farmers. Not much complaints from them when they are exporting record amounts of dairy products to new markets like China.

See above. Farmers do not have access to "new markets". Milk producers are generally signed into contracts with their milk factory. The contracts are generally along the line of "we'll pay you a 1c per litre more premium than our base price and in return, you must supply us exclusively for the next X years". Now that might sound nice but the processor sets the base price at their own whim (last week one of the larger ones, Glanbia, decided to drop its base price by 1c). and again, competition is non existent. the individual farmer has no choice except for the binary produce or give up. Easy enough you think until you learn that many have made capital investments of hundreds of thousands of Euros. And the producers are literally creaming it (no pun intended)

markodaly wrote: »

I suppose this ties in with the complaints about rural Ireland, that Dublin always gets everything, yet the average Dub renter or worker stuck in traffic will not share that sentiment. The Dublin economy along with the likes of Cork and Limerick, by and large, subvents the rest of the country.

Issues about post offices, lack of jobs, one off housing, transport, pubs closing, schools, hospitals, get a lot of airplay, yet a lot of these issues are self-inflicted because of insane one-off housing planning laws.

Lazy soundbyte. Hospitals/post-offices close in large towns and relatively large urban centres outside of Dublin. This shite about 1-off housing being the root of all evil is just that - shite

markodaly wrote: »

Also, we do not even talk about the global trend. 200,000 people per day, move to cities in the world. Ireland was always a rural economy and country, we never had an industrial revolution so we remained an agrarian society, by and large. Since the 70s though this has started to change and we are just catching up with the global norm. We still have a few decades to go in this process.

Yet, rural Ireland complains, endlessly. Some complaints are valid, broadband for example, but I see it not as a rural vs urban debate, its more of a planning and long term view debate. We as a country are not great at executing plans, as we always interfere politically.

There are a lot of pros living in rural ireland, the biggest is cheaper housing. One can buy a nice 4 bed house in many parts of the country for about €200,000. That won't buy you a hovel in Dublin.

Rural Ireland would be a lot better served if it acted and elected more thoughtful representatives who would fight to expand their towns and villages rather than fight for handouts, accept one-off planed houses as the norm and expect the world stop and revert back to the 1950s, as if it was all wonderful then.

In other words, rural Ireland needs less of the Jackie Healy Rae types and more of the people who brought you the Westport Greenway.

Nobody is asking for handouts. They are protesting for fairness. Same as what triggered the 1913 lockout. I'm sure if there was a boards.ie back then you might have been on it giving out about workers looking for handouts.


The simple fact is that the current system is unsustainable. The factory owners are happy to kill the golden goose and get their money now. But the farmers cannot be expected to continue to produce at a loss. The problem is that it can take, say, 2.5 years to rear an animal. It's not something that you can turn on and off like a tap. And when they are ready to be processed, they have to be done.



The sugar in your press used to grow in Ireland but now it is imported. That industry went to the wall about a decade ago but you might not be aware of it because it was not as large as beef industry. It just vanished. The processors/sellers/supermarkets are still making their profit, but there is more money flowing out of the economy now that used to stay and circulate within it. The beef processors ultimately won't care - they'll just lobby to bring it in from elsewhere. Already processed too. They can have it done at source in Brazil or wherever for lower wages. The consumer won't get the same standards...but sure feck standards until the next BSE or equivalent crisis......the money will be made and in the pocket by then. You can see how quickly they cut their own staff to take the brunt rather than the factory owners absorbing anything. Fella on the radio this morning moaning that the workers being laid off wouldn't be entitled to dole because they are Chinese and Brazilian FFS

OP, You say farmers have been doing well recently. That’s not a true statement. Dairy farmers have been doing well.

Beef farmers are reliant on subsidies, the business itself just about broke even last year and the year before and this year will not even do that, it’ll eat into those subsidies.

That’s not sustainable, you talk about diversifying but these are beef farmers, it’s not like they can grow something else. It’s beef or don’t farm. Larry Goodman has a monopoly on Irish beef and has screwed farmers over for years, it’s very close to breaking point.

That’ll result in no suckler farmers in future, why would they do it. No sucklers means less cattle into the market, reduced quality, the sector will eventually just fail.

Beef farmers are subsidised for a reason, to provide affordable quality food, people will find out very quickly that it’s not cheap to produce and less people doing so will only drive up the price. So instead you’ll have South American beef, with gods knows what antibiotics and hormones in it.

Be careful what you wish for

For what it’s worth I’d agree the protesters are very militant and if the leaders are saying it’s a good deal they should accept it. They are doing a terrible PR job

meat should be a lot more expensive than it is. i say that as a consumer

jam_mac_jam wrote: »

Consumers need to pay more for beef. It's obviously too cheap at the moment. I would happily pay more for it if it goes to the farmer that is not the supermarket

A problem in general with agricultural produce is that the large supermarkets suddenly decide that thet want to run a promotion etc. so they demand their suppliers give them cut price produce. The suppliers then push this cut down onto the farmers.
The farmers have grown/reared the product. It needs to be harvested/killed now. They have spent the money growing it but that is a sunk cost.


To take a little bit of a sidestep and return to my milk creamery example above. An analogy might be if there were only a handful of employers in Dublin employing all the people. And if all operated a scheme where you had to sign up to work exclusively for them (or not work at all) for the next 5 years and that they would pay 50c an hour above their "base price". And imagine too that there was no minimum wage. Do you think that such a system would be allowed to persist? why not let the Dublin workers compete for their hourly wages against the global prices/levels of income?

Microsoft, Intel, and Guinness aren't in the papers every day whinging. I would say farmers should try and do something else for a living but I've seen them shouting vegan at Leo and yeah, they probably aren't fit for much more than working on farms.
I love how you take such an interest in my posts jmayo with your busy farm life and all x.

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

Microsoft, Intel, and Guinness aren't in the papers every day whinging. I would say farmers should try and do something else for a living but I've seen them shouting vegan at Leo and yeah, they probably aren't fit for much more than working on farms.
I love how you take such an interest in my posts jmayo with your busy farm life and all x.

Your post is so ignorant, it's really not worth the time to disect

Green&Red wrote: »

Classy

Yup that's the attitudes we have to deal with. In their eyes farming is a job for uneducated idiots because all we do is give out about vegans and pollute the environment and don't know any better.

Reeks of the pale off that lad.

_Brian wrote: »

It’s pretty ignorant post above to generalise about farmers like that, shows a narrow dim mind behind the post.

It’s one of the most ignorant posts I’ve seen on boards

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

they probably aren't fit for much more than working on farms.

You wouldn't last a day of work on a farm.

jmayo wrote: »

Did I say I was a farmer ?

You know what they say about people making assumptions.

As jammiedodgers reminds us, maybe you just are looking for a bit of attention.

No, I sometimes have too much time on my hands, I'll admit that.
I assumed you were a farmer given you show up in every thread about farming and one off housing. Same way you assume I'm a liberal fairy vegan from the city.

jam_mac_jam wrote: »

Consumers need to pay more for beef. It's obviously too cheap at the moment. I would happily pay more for it if it goes to the farmer that is not the supermarket

I don't think the retail price is too low.

I think processor profits like Goodman's 170m are too high.