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Farmers as individual businesses are vulnerable. Given the scale increase at farm level, many commercial farms are turning over significant amounts of money. Farming has evolved quickly to a full-scale commercial business.
Companies working in agriculture want and need to know everything about farms and farmers – where they spend money, what decisions they make, what mechanisation they need, genetic data on stock.
The generation of data has been the foundation for a number of agriculture-related companies worldwide. Closer to home, we have our own data company, the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF), owned by Irish farmers, which is now embroiled in a new contracts-for-semen battle and an ongoing funding problem. The ICBF needs to clarify, for its shareholders and farmers, the issue around contracting herds or individual cows for AI companies. The federation must have the best interests of the industry and all farmers at the core of its success and mission. Irish farmers need the best genetics from around the world that perform well in an Irish ranking.
We are very lucky to have the ICBF. We only have to look to Northern Ireland, where the apathy on profitable breeding traits, level of sire recording and national database development is scant or non-existent. Compare this with the depth of data and knowledge the ICBF has developed since 2001, which is owned by farmers. As farm scale increases, automation and technology are called on to do more work. Automatic calf feeders, robotic milkers, drones measuring grass, neck collars telling the farmer the cow is in heat or a tractor computer deciding for the farmer where to spread the fertiliser – the list is endless.
All information generated by these tools on-farm tells a story about work routines, inputs, animal health, feed availability, etc. How to use this information is key. In the right hands, it can allow for better decisions. Farmers must own this data.
Farmer ownership
In Ireland, we often take for granted the level of farmer ownership in companies and the strength of our farming organisations. Farmer representatives sit on the boards of a lot of the companies involved in this data and ownership row – ICBF, Progressive Genetics, Munster AI and dairy companies. These are the farmers we entrust with making the right decisions for the Irish industry and it is these farmers we need to inform about ongoing issues. If we didn’t have farmers on these boards, we would be at the mercy of commercial business decisions that may or may not have the best interests of the Irish farmer at heart.
Farmers need to be clear on ownership structures and know how they can influence positive change.
We don’t have to look too far to see the negative effects of a lack of farmer ownership. In the UK, the dairy processing sector, and the advisory and research sector have all lost farmer ownership, governance and clout. When this happened, the UK commercial farm sector over time began to fight among itself, lose influence, cede power to hobby rural landowners and companies with vested interests. The trend is inevitable.
We are lucky in Ireland to have a large proportion of the dairy processing sector with a strong farmer voice. Large parts of Europe have lost this and farmers supply private milk companies.
In the beef sector, farmer organisations have expressed concern that one of the big three Irish groups is taking over what was an independent processor in the Republic of Ireland (see pages 3 and 14). Dunbia was publishing accounts in recent years, with the year ending March 2016 showing an operating profit of £9.2m (€10.6m) on a turnover of £787m (€904m).
This is a huge amount of money in absolute terms but small as a percentage of turnover at 1.2%. However, it is still a higher percentage than a lot of commercial suckler farmers can generate.
Lack of transparency in meat processing is a huge contributor to the lack of confidence farmers have in dealing with processors.
The beef industry badly needs greater transparency and a model that shows farmers where the carcase value and processor efficiency is. This, combined with efficient on-farm production, would build more farmer confidence in factories.
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