There’s no question that communications with the farming public about the changes to the suckler breeding indexes have been poor.

Less than one year into a new suckler scheme where star ratings play an important role, and one which saw the Department of Agriculture and Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) embark on a nationwide tour explaining it, it seems odd this wasn’t flagged publicly sooner.

Or was it that people just didn’t want to hear it?

Given that roughly one third of suckler farmers are participating in the Suckler Carbon Efficiency Programme (SCEP), is it really the most pressing issue facing the suckler sector?

I don’t see it impacting the breed composition of future weanling crops in the suckler heartland. They have been extremely consistent over the years and terminal breeds will always make sense in that system, so farmers won’t walk away from the tried and trusted.

Prices have held very firm for those weanlings, if not increased, over the last few years.

I suspect the reduction of supply played a part in the price of those well-conformed cattle being as good as it is, but I can see a premium price being paid for them for a while yet.

Showing

While I wouldn’t be building a business plan around it in the morning, the commercial showing side of suckling seems to have taken on a life of its own in recent years.

Seeing the enthusiasm and interest among young people is something to build on. It also shows that while there are genuine concerns about succession, there is a cohort of future suckler farmers looking for opportunities.

In both of those markets, colour and shape take precedent over indexes and I can’t see that changing either.

The herd here has a Simmental base and they are one of the breeds impacted the most.

Herd ratings

As a result of the changes between the September and December evaluations on the Eurostar report, the herd average rating for cows dropped by €12, the one to two-year-old heifers are down €1 and the animals up to one year are up €2.

When I compare them to the December 2019 evaluation, the cows are only back €2, the heifers are down €5 and the heifer calves are up €9.

I ran the evaluation for early December back as far as 2019, and at no point in the last five years did the replacement index figure for all three classes of stock remain the same.

I’ve seen these figures for my own herd go up and down enough over the years to not be too bothered by them anymore. The main figures I’m focused on concern keeping input costs down and increasing the gap between them and outputs.

I just wonder if there’s more to this than the indexes. ICBF is viewed as marmite by some in farming circles and there is a cohort of farmers out there that if ICBF said that water was wet, I’m sure they would argue it wasn’t.

It has created more farmer disillusionment with the powers that be.

I’ve never heard farmers feel so let down by politicians as I did at the Cork IFA emergency meeting on derogation, with a lot of heat directed at MEPs, in particular, for telling farmers what they wanted to hear.

Across the sectors, there’s a danger that the Department could lose the room.

Bad weather, delayed payments for everyone and further delays for 18,000 ACRES participants in parts of the country most dependent on environmental payments could be a dangerous mix heading into the new year.