Sheep 2023 last Saturday lived up to the billing. A great atmosphere and everyone pulling together to showcase the best the sector can offer. The organising committee delivered sunshine, sheep of all shapes and sizes, over 100 exhibitors and over 5,000 farmers from all corners of Ireland.

Spring lamb when cooked properly is hard to beat. It can rival beef for taste and nutritional value on most days and surpass many other meats.

Now it would be easy to continue this round up of happy-clappy observations after a fantastic day last Saturday, if which we were proud to be a partner.

However, we either believe the numbers or not in terms of where the sector is heading and have a mature discussion or just ignore the writing on the wall.

Conversion to an organic system is seen as a saviour for the sector – it delivers a €250/ha premium, which is so badly needed on many farms that are practically organic anyway.

As an income source, it is simply too important to ignore. This is the reason that there will probably be almost 3,000 organic sheep farmers out of a total 6,000 organic farmers in Ireland by the end of the year.

Enticing

The tiny organic premium for meat isn’t driving this influx, but on average a €60,000 cumulative payment (40ha farm) over five years is enough to entice more in.

Organics will mean less sheep for many flock owners. It’s likely there will be a shortage of organic lamb finishers with organic feed retailing at €800/t, hence the knock-on increase in organic meat might actually be small enough.

I may well be wrong, but a straw poll from Saturday suggests that on these organic farms, there will be less ewes going in lamb, less sheep overall on the farms and no focus on technical performance or improvement on these farms.

At the moment from the 1,500 organic sheep farmers, about 500 lambs per week from a weekly total of 55,000 are organic.

Key numbers

The key industry numbers are relatively simple – the Teagasc National Farm survey numbers released last week show that in 2022, over 40% of sheep farms had a family farm income of less than €5,000.

There was a 16% increase in the number of farms in 2022 that had a family farm income less than €5,000. At the moment, the sector is on a road to less and less significance – it’s not to be the prophet of doom and gloom – but we need to either shape up or accept the inevitable decline.

Not many of the 5,000 farmers in Gurteen would accept that Bord Bia is doing enough to promote and differentiate an exceptional quality product, and deliver a satisfactory payment for quality assurance.

Not many of the farmers would accept less than €150 for a spring lamb.

The majority of farmers I talked to on Saturday suggested they need €200 per lamb at a minimum to leave a margin, given where input costs have gone in the last year. We can’t keep blaming the factories.

Yes, they have a very serious role to play, but farmers have to answer key questions for themselves also.

Are genetics right on farm? Are new hybrid genetics offering better live lamb rates? Is a smaller ewe with the need for less input more profitable? Is a more easycare breed of sheep the future to alleviate shearing and labour problems around busy times on sheep farms?

Sheep Ireland, the separate and distinct arm of ICBF, that has its own governance structure, must take great heart in how they have established and got flock recording off the ground.

Measurement

However, the numbers of flock owners recording performance is simply not big enough. Measurement is the only way technical performance can improve.

Is the Department doing enough to incentivise uptake? I fear not. Is Teagasc doing enough to drive uptake by farmers? I fear not. Most Teagasc advisers in the space are up to their eyes in paperwork and schemes when key decisions around tagging, recording and plans are made for the year.

The sector challenges are real, however, the passion and resilience of the sector and the beautiful natural product that is ultimately delivered offers hope to a sector that isn’t environmentally challenged like many other agri sectors.