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DEAR SIR: A number of questions arise following the annual Newford Farm open day.
Clearly suckler/beef farming is demonstrably unsustainable by the notional loss of €3,147 published. But the failure to include a wage for the manager and the cost of the land is utterly perplexing. Are Teagasc and the industry afraid to speak the truth?
The average industrial wage in Ireland is €45,611. The average salary is €36,919, so add that to your €3,147 and it gives a net loss of €40,066. Add a modest land rental fee of €100 per acre for 130 acres and we get an additional cost of €13,000 leaving us with a net loss of €53,066! Try doing that for a few years before penury sets in. Angus Woods IFA chair of the national livestock committee clearly agrees that “current beef prices are not viable or economically sustainable for suckler beef farmers, a reality we have been highlighting for a long time.”
The question that then arises is why and how suckler farmers continue to operate beef and suckler businesses at a substantial loss? I’d suggest that the role of direct payments are subsidising this folly and the money is going directly into the coffers of the beef slaughtering plants and the bottom line of the multinational food retailers. Why is nobody advising farmers to merely park their subsidy money in a deposit account and use their land to produce fodder or grow wild flowers as clearly they would be financially better off?
Farmers have paid and continue to pay a high price for turning their backs on the co-op model for beef processing and marketing - a model still under some semblance of control by dairy farmers - and for supporting the absurd, penal and nonsensical beef grading system, all of which underpin the unviability and sure death of the beef industry in Ireland.
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