Bracketed by challenging conditions to the year with snow and storms early on and rain dominating the final six weeks, 2025 was a year to remember for those involved in beef farming. The grazing year was one of the best we had in a long time and prices took on a life of their own.

Base prices were knocking on the door of €5.50/kg last January and with the grid, QPS and breed bonuses, €6/kg was available. Four months later and farmers were being paid in excess of €8/kg. There were week-on-week increases in factory prices as numbers weren’t there to satisfy demand. It was unheard of.

Mart trade

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In marts across the country, prices for cattle and calves cranked up a notch every week. Early on, the chat and murmurs in the calf ring died down whenever an Angus- or Hereford-cross calf would go beyond €430. Silence would gradually descend with every €5 bid.

A few pushed for €500 in early March and they would have been the talk of the sale. By April and May, those prices were commonplace for the lower half of the trade as everyone scrambled to adjust.

I never thought I would see a time where beef price would be running €2/kg ahead of milk but that’s where we are now. One swallow doesn’t make a summer though and the downturn the dairy sector is presently experiencing shows how cyclical prices for agricultural commodities are.

Farmers, who for years had locked themselves into a certain system, suddenly had to change tack.

Summer grazers, who were delighted with prices they got for their store cattle in November 2024, found themselves having to pay out a similar amount for cattle 200kg lighter in April.

A lot of change

There was a crazy level of change in a short period of time. Who knows what was spent over the last decade trying to get beef farmers to consider rearing dairy beef. In the space of four months that all changed.

Budget restraints saw most buyers drop down the weight categories to suit and the once-maligned dairy-cross weanling and calf became the only option in some cases.

No doubt there were harsh lessons learned in some cases. There’s a big difference in the workload if you move from buying cattle and leaving them off the ramp into a field of grass to taking the young calf option.

There’s been a bit of time to adjust to the new prices so it will be interesting to see how the live trade goes this spring.

Opportunity

After decades of getting by, there is now an opportunity for the beef sector as a whole. If the supply and demand balance stays along current lines and prices remain at levels we’ve seen throughout last year and late 2024, then it could be enough to breathe a bit of new life into the sector.

At farm level, the key to this will be getting the basics right and that includes keeping a lid on costs. This will be even more important given the pace of change in geopolitical circles.

That has changed immeasurably in the last year and could lead to a different outlook within the EU. We’ve seen it already with Mercosur but the CAP budget will move into focus this year.

I could see funding around food production holding but what we have known as Pillar II payments could be under pressure as priorities change at a rapid pace.

It might be looked back on as the year of the great beef reset yet.