DEAR SIR: For a very long time now, your excellent Irish Farmers Journal has been attempting to unravel the intricacies, vagaries and intrigues of something that is of major importance to the economy of rural Ireland – the beef trade, or rather the price we get for our cattle.

Drystock farmers have no wish to hear any more waffle from the useless task force, Grant Thornton, Meat Industry Ireland (MII), Bord Bia or the plethora of experts who would die with the hunger if they had to make a living like we do.

Recently, Professor FitzGerald of the Climate Change Advisory Council suggested that drystock farmers would be better off staying in bed than producing beef. These are the kind of experts who have no concept whatsoever of what farming life is really about.

Education is a great thing in so many ways, but alas it has obliterated so much common sense. It is well-educated people who impose such nonsensical regulations on us like cattle movements, 30-month age limits, out of test and must be tested before slaughter, etc.

The closing down of our quality assured beef trade with China because of one – yes, just one asymptomatic BSE case – it wouldn’t happen in Brazil if they had 1,000 cases.

As you wrote in a recent editorial, Irish farmers have been forced to incur all the additional costs of producing a premium product, only to be paid less.

Finishing cattle for the winter in recent years has become an ocean of uncertainties surrounded by an expanse of expenses.

The main reason our beef price is so bad relative to Northern Ireland, Britain, or many other countries, is because it is so well controlled by just a few and everybody else toes the line – just look at the base quotes each week in the Irish Farmers Journal.

These few beef barons have very fertile minds and, as excellent businessmen, their aim is to make as much profit as possible.

They have to be admired for using their own ingenuity, energy, organisation, efficiency and our cattle to amass huge fortunes for themselves. When we had our own farmer-owned meat plants they were a disaster.

The men who export the calves and weanlings should be supported, for apart from these animals, almost every other one born has to go through the factory gates.

MII knows exactly how many cattle are in the system and if, like this year, it is known that there are less cattle to be killed, MII will adjust itself and reduce the weekly kill so that the perceived scarcity will have no effect on price and, if possible, turn a shortage into a surplus. Sweet are the uses of adversity. Farm organisations are crying out for transparency, but the truth in these matters is a very elusive concept.

As dairying has expanded so much, there is an avalanche of dairy stock to be slaughtered in the years ahead and they will be used to depress the value of the great suckler beef we are producing.

If only we had a live trade for these cattle like we had in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s.

When talking to a renowned cattle man lately about these dairy stock, I suggested, in desperation, that we should dig up Seamus and Michael Purcell, Haughey and Gaddafi and get the boats going again to Libya, Egypt and elsewhere.

Roguishly, he asked who would I put down instead of them. Let your readers decide.