Occasionally things go wrong.

I have had crops when diseases, weather, bad sowing conditions, out of control weeds etc have meant that we had to recognise reality and simply decide that we would have to just try and salvage what we could by going in and harvesting and taking whatever would go through the combine and hope that our customer would give us a reasonable price for what he was taking in.

Inevitably that crop lost money but we had to get the field cleared and hope that we would learn the lessons from what went wrong and plan for better the following year. But I never in my wildest dreams thought I would be facing a similar salvage operation with beef cattle in the month of May/early June.

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Not that, unlike in the tillage example, there is anything wrong with the cattle.

Everyone acknowledges they are ideal for the market and tick all the boxes regarding age, quality assurance, weight and finish but it is a salvage operation. We are facing delays in getting them slaughtered and the price is dropping week on week. Over the last week, I listened to two lengthy broadcasts.

The first was the meat factory representative body IBEC before the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture and Food.

This was the first time I had seen or heard any official meat factory spokesmen.

The fact that both were formerly senior Department of Agriculture officials rather than factory owners or operators meant that the questioning TDs and Senators were dealt with impeccable deference and courtesy. But the session was worthwhile in that we were told that cold stores were full of unsold beef, that we were being partly replaced on the weak British market by Australian and New Zealand product let in under the Brexit UK trade agreements and that under the sliding scale provision in these agreements, this was going to be a significant long-term problem for us.

This year’s problems were added to by increased imports of Brazilian and Polish beef.

We were also told, of which I was unaware, that the agri food regulator had more access to beef industry information than was the case up to now and will have extra powers next year and that we were seeing a market correction after the very high prices of last year.

The only other nugget I took from the Oireachtas session was the existence of firm fixed price contracts for some finishers. How these were selected was not made clear. The IFA webinar on the same subject had no beef factory representative at all.

Bord Bia’s competent markets manager Joe Burke went through much the same details but little new emerged. However, at the end of both broadcasts, I had a clear idea of where the problems were and why but no idea whether meat factory profitability was being maintained and whether producers were being left to pick up all the losses.

Meanwhile, real life continues. The winter barley is just about beginning to turn and though the recent heavy rain over the weekend is causing it to slightly wobble, so far, no lodging. If this rain had come one month earlier I’m sure there would have been problems. The winter wheat is now fully eared out though I’m disappointed in one of the fields of seed wheat to see some contamination from winter barley. These are being hand rogued and we will have to get rid of them completely before the first Department inspection.

The heavy rain has put paid to our aspirations to cut the silage this week but as soon as there is a favourable forecast, we will move in. Immediately we get the silage cut we will get the agitated slurry out as quickly as possible.