It has been an excellent summer for grass, but all could be undone with a wet autumn. We’re on that tipping point at the moment here in north Longford, with some land becoming soft and wet. A dry summer would be very welcome indeed.

The Beef Exceptional Aid Measure (BEAM) scheme is a strange concept. Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to apply for it - direct payments are too important to turn down. The reduction in bovine nitrate figures from the previous 12 months seems to fly in the face of the Food Harvest 2020 and Food Wise 2025 targets for the beef sector.

What cattle will form the majority of the required 5% reduction in numbers on participants’ farms? If suckler cow numbers are to reduce and the ‘free space’ taken up by a dairy calf-to-beef enterprise, then the proportion of beef processed from the dairy herd will increase and decrease from the suckler herd. Is this palatable for retailers and consumers? Will fast food outlets and large retailers market their beef using images of Angus, Hereford and Limousin steers and heifers from the dairy herd? Or indeed, Friesian or Jersey-cross steers?

Scheme requirements

I am wondering how I will meet the scheme requirements. More than likely, it will be a case of selling some weanlings for the first time ever, rather than keeping them on as store cattle. I’ll play this by ear, but there will have to be some careful planning on the beef side of the farm enterprise.

It’s the time of the year that I love on farm. There always seems to be more time to carry out all those extra jobs. We have installed another roadway on the home farm and have carried out some drainage work on some wet land near the milking parlour. Some autumn reseeding is also taking place at the moment on the out farm. A number of heifers were sold in Granard Mart recently, with prices well back at an average of €1.80/kg.

Protests

I share the narrative that I’ve read and listened to in the past fortnight, that the recent factory gate protests were the result of a simmering anger among beef farmers who felt backed into a corner. I hope the wider public will understand farmers’ frustration. It’s not as simple as bad price = farmer anger, but rather an exasperation that processors and retailers seem to be profiteering from us.

Cattle are stock in a business sense, but it’s much more personal than that. A company making plastic or metal equipment to sell on to other product developers doesn’t get up in the middle of the night in the rain to check on their stock, or experience the lows of the inevitable mortality issues. We, as beef farmers, cannot allow our livestock, and our blood, sweat and tears that accompany them, to be sold at such small margins.

Let’s just hope that those on both sides of the picket can work together to deliver a fair price for farmers.

Read more

Beef price update: prices static while BEAM opens for applications

Farmer Writes: first heifers arrive for 2021 milking project