There were some sobering figures from the IFA beef conference in Tullamore this week.
A fairly bleak outlook for beef and suckler farmers for 2017. Santa might be under pressure to deliver this Christmas ... and next Christmas ... and the one after that.
‘The IFA – a dog with no teeth?’
Speaking of the IFA. My local parish is Mullagh, Co Cavan, and last week was the branch IFA AGM. Up until now my only exposure to the IFA was media titbits of wage secrecy, lack of transparency and general discontent.
A near-empty carpark made me ponder that I was wasting a Wednesday evening
I kept meaning to do a bit of research and get involved, but the year ran away with me. With my mother tagging along, we bumped up the female representation to about a third. I was the youngest in the room by a few decades.
She hadn’t bothered going for quite some years despite remaining a member and paying her levies. Too much of a hassle to opt out perhaps.
My first thought was that we had the wrong night. A near-empty carpark made me ponder that I was wasting a Wednesday evening. Confounded by the fact that about 9% of local members turned out, it’s hard not to see the uphill struggle that the IFA seems to have.
I’m not really sure why the dwindling 9% were there. Perhaps is was neighbourly loyalty. Disillusion, negativity, lack of representation and continued lack of transparency were the overwhelming themes of my first IFA experience. But maybe that’s the essence of an IFA meeting; you can’t beat a good moan.
Complacency within the IFA, lack of competition, it’s relevance to part-time farmers and the amalgamation of smaller branches were all discussed.
A naive newbie, I left the meeting as secretary. It’s been a steep learning curve over the last year and my policy is that you must get involved in order to form an opinion. I don’t buy into armchair politics, in fact I think it’s pretty lazy. You can’t change a thing from there.
Spreading lime on Jane Shackleton’s farm in Co Cavan
Winter work
Searching for a positive, at least the weather has been kind to us so far this winter. I got a good amount of lime spread over the past few weeks – better late than never.
Weanlings and some finishers were housed mid-November and all have remained healthy despite the warm weather. There is a batch still out, although that might change over the next few days. Generally, as we have plenty of fodder and housing space, we will hold on and sell in the new year when the price improves.
We got away some older heifers we had held onto this week. They averaged 320kg dead. The price is low enough for organic at the moment, about €4.50/kg. Hopefully this will increase after Christmas when the majority of ours will become fit.
Autumn calvers
Replacement heifers have been put to the bull. This means our first intentional split-calving season next year. We have the shed space and the increase in feed costs with winter housing autumn-calvers will hopefully be worth it. 
Calves will be on the ground sooner and reducing the age of heifers calving down will hopefully increase productivity and profitability.
With Christmas around the corner, I’m looking forward to family descending for a few days. It also reminds me to buy a few extra forks for them – there is nothing better to work off that Christmas pudding than a bit of festive silage graping.