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The Irish Cattle and Sheep Breeders Association (ICSA) has called for a minimum lamb price of €9.30/kg from processors.
Calls for a price increase come as ICSA sheep chair Sean McNamara says the increased cost of finishing lambs this winter will “push sheep farmers out of business”.
He claimed that prices for lambs in November 2021 were a “full euro ahead of where they are now”, at €7.30/kg to €7.40/kg, and warned that store lamb finishers need at “least two euros more per kilo” to meet production costs.
‘Zero incentive’
McNamara suggested that “with the current price of meal, feeding lambs this winter will be impossible at today’s factory prices”.
“Lambs weighing 30kg now will need 70 days of feeding to get them to a factory-fit weight by the middle of January, which the ICSA has calculated will cost around €60 per lamb.
“But with factory prices hovering around the €6.30/kg mark, there is zero incentive for sheep farmers to keep going and to commit to buying meal that is now costing about €500/t,” he said.
Input cost increase
The Westmeath sheep farmer warned that finishing store lambs over the coming months “makes absolutely no sense when our costs have gone up so significantly”.
“There is just no logic to it and it is the reason so many sheep farmers are seriously questioning their ability to continue,” he continued.
McNamara also claimed that “sheep farmers have always been last in line when it comes to Government supports” and emphasised this as the reason they “rely on getting a fair price” for lamb produced.
“Processors, as well as retailers, simply cannot continue to ignore the basic maths around the cost of producing food.”
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