The beef market this spring is an extraordinary reversal of the usual trend. Instead of having a gently rising market price from November through Christmas and onto March, we have had a continuous regular decline despite the cost of keeping cattle increasing with each passing week.

Polish farmers are now getting 26c/kg more for R3 young bulls than Irish farmers are getting for R3 steers and the gap is widening. A few questions need to be asked. But to put it in context, farming and food production has always been recognised as needing some kind of State involvement rather than leaving everything to market forces.

As the high priest of economics Adam Smith commented in his classic text, milk suppliers supplying fresh milk to the enormous London market were vulnerable to price-fixing by the small number of buyers and distributors.

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The basics haven’t changed. But here now are several Irish agencies with a role to play in this extraordinary reversal of normal market trends. The first is Bord Bia, which has a direct market intelligence function.

While they have compiled their table of European and world beef prices, I have not been aware of any comment and analysis on how the current crisis has arisen in Irish beef production.

But key questions need to be asked. The first of course is how has the relative market return to our meat plants changed from last year to this? The US compiles these prices as a matter of routine. Is it a coincidence that all the meat plants have moved their prices down in unison?

Does the competition and consumer protection body need to dust down its files on how to investigate suspected collusion and price fixing among processors?

These are nearly all private unlimited companies, with no visibility on their profitability.

They have drawn down very significant marketing and equipment grants from Enterprise Ireland with public money, but no public visibility as to how the business plan underlying the request for funding has been justified and, more to the point, no attempt to justify how the primary producers’ interests have been safeguarded.

Should Enterprise Ireland take more areas into account when pursuing grant applications? There is a high degree of concentration in the Irish meat industry.

Takeovers of independent plants have been facilitated and evidence of real wealth is clearly present.

We have set up a fairness in the food chain organisation under the chairmanship of the well-regarded Joe Healy.

They should seek an extension of their role to include an examination of the role of meat firms’ own and rented feedlots.

There is little point in the main groups having demonstration farms showing best practice at farm level if at factory level the only emphasis is on maximising short-term profitability.