getting out of sheep

gone up the hill · Sep 28, 2017

Poorbuthappy said:
Come on Guth - I've put plenty of figures up in the past - you're welcome to go look for them, I can't be bothered.
And show me where I had a go at you for putting up prices/market reports?
I believe you're referring to when I pointed out why people were getting narked at you always asking for their prices when you seemingly never post your own.
But hey ho, it's a free country, you don't have to

I post a lot of prices, not bothering to point out to you where you had a go at me on that thread but its quite clear on there for all to read that you were having a go at me when you never bother to post any prices yourself or put anything back into that thread yet as you said you are quite happy to read what others are getting but you cant be bothered to post what you are getting ( in your own words )

digger64 · Sep 28, 2017

h tfarmer said:
Mabye you can explain to me how were going to compete with the irish for beef when they have better grass growing conditions AND over 300 euros per ha sub and we get none??

Exactly the same way we do now but with lower land and feed costs etc and possibly transport , you do realise
the Irish own a large % of our slaughter plants now , just basically trade on lower level with lower expectations , yes your land will drop in value accordingly , but someone will ranch it if not you ,

digger64 · Sep 28, 2017

gone up the hill said:
Its a dairy x calve, will either be out of a NZ type cow or looked after very badly for the first 10 days of its life, either way it will eat more than it will make you.

If someone is prepared to give £150 for it ,it would be better than that , start low - finish low but margin is the point of interest

gone up the hill · Sep 28, 2017

digger64 said:
If someone is prepared to give £150 for it ,it would be better than that , start low - finish low but margin is the point of interest

No that is what that type of calve will make ( esp Angus with a named sire )

digger64 · Sep 28, 2017

gone up the hill said:
No that is what that type of calve will make ( esp Angus with a named sire )

Then there must be something in it then as its more than the meat price or the buyers are nuts

Kiwi Pete · Sep 28, 2017

Bossfarmer said:
how much cereals you grow?

I don't grow any here.
This was just a play in someone else's rig for the day as I'd done the commute but some chodmong had backed my plough into a strainer and bust the mouldboard off

So spent a day in the pivot letting greenstar do my job

(Mostly standing on the steps smoking cigarettes and taking pictures)

It has been remapped up to about 500 horses

There are a few cereal growers around but it's more 'conservation style Min-Till' cereal, than 'plough, fert, plough, fert, cry,' cereal

Yields the same but drastically reduces inputs

and our weather isn't reliable enough to spend huge money that may not be recouped.
Plenty of times that harvesting has been impossible- no safety net here - you have to weave your own; that's what I was referring to with your comment about 'maximum efficiency', the conventional high input high expectation cereal cropping system is extremely reliant on getting a good yield.
NZ and Aus is definitely not subscribing blindly to that one as @Farmer Roy has already noted... too risky by far.

It may well appear from the sum of my posts that I'm simply anti-sub, anti-chemical, and anti-cultivation... but I'm not.
I'm just free-thinking and want to show people there is a way off the treadmill.
You just have to want to get off it.

Kiwi Pete · Sep 28, 2017

Nithsdale Farmer said:
I didn't claim it was perfect, or we should go back to it... all I said was:

In the context of my post, people who were active farming, and not slipper farmers.

That's the big thing - it has to be easily administerable by way of means testing the recipients.
You submit your application along with your last year financials and get a lump sum - same lump for everyone - when your books show you are a farmer. Not just pay per acre blindly, or pay per head possibly - but pay per farmer.
So the farmer can still live and go about their work safe in the knowledge that it's recognised and appreciated, but without encouraging all the unfairness and fudging that goes on now.
Perhaps then the casualties will be those who aim to farm acres (and detract the most from agriculture UK) while still making the emphasis on running a profitable enterprise off the land.

Al R · Sep 28, 2017

digger64 said:
Exactly the same way we do now but with lower land and feed costs etc and possibly transport , you do realise
the Irish own a large % of our slaughter plants now , just basically trade on lower level with lower expectations , yes your land will drop in value accordingly , but someone will ranch it if not you ,

Are 2 sisters Irish? I wouldn't want to be relying on selling chicken meat anytime soon :0

Kiwi Pete · Sep 28, 2017

digger64 said:
Then there must be something in it then as its more than the meat price or the buyers are nuts

It depends on quite a few factors IMO
You have to have a good eye for stock potential to make it work out, and know it's had a good start as @gone up the hill has noted many don't.
Relationship with the farmer supplier is the cheapest but unquantifiable part - there is plenty of window-dressing that goes on (feed them up for a picture) but the low cost does definitely have it's merits especially given volatility.
This year again there's a milk powder shortage -dont ask me how it can be in short supply again- so I won't lean that way myself this spring. Habits are costly, you have to constantly reevaluate everything to be efficient.
From grazing to business goals, nothing should be just blindly assumed to work because it did last time. IMO that's risky practice.
Question everything every time, the right dairy x fed right will make money.

ollie989898 · Sep 28, 2017

gone up the hill said:
Do you actually understand what effect cheap imports have on UK prices?

You are never going to have a situation where the UK puts up barriers to imports in any great way, so stop dreaming of it.

Poorbuthappy · Sep 28, 2017

gone up the hill said:
I post a lot of prices, not bothering to point out to you where you had a go at me on that thread but its quite clear on there for all to read that you were having a go at me when you never bother to post any prices yourself or put anything back into that thread yet as you said you are quite happy to read what others are getting but you cant be bothered to post what you are getting ( in your own words )

Selective use of my own words but it's not worth falling out over so I'll leave it there.
(Total misquote in fact)

digger64 · Sep 28, 2017

ollie989898 said:
You are never going to have a situation where the UK puts up barriers to imports in any great way, so stop dconsistantly it.

Given that the thread was about getting out of sheep and it was said earlier that consumers tend to resist purchasing lamb retailing at over £10 /kg if we are to have consistant market share we really have got to attempt to achieve this some how with margin or we will be constantly ducking and diving price wise as imports are used to put us back to reality in the market place and losing customers /processors on the way , I don't think they import lamb because they want to

Kiwi Pete · Sep 28, 2017

digger64 said:
Given that the thread was about getting out of sheep and it was said earlier that consumers tend to resist purchasing lamb retailing at over £10 /kg if we are to have consistant market share we really have got to attempt to achieve this some how with margin or we will be constantly ducking and diving price wise as imports are used to put us back to reality in the market place and losing customers /processors on the way , I don't think they import lamb because they want to

Lamb is far to expensive and inconvenient for the younger consumer.
That is far more important to a producer than anything else - but beating everyone over the heads with a CAP pool noodle is far more productive, and achieves much more, than addressing the divisiveness, poor marketing, lack of cooperation and all the other ills ahead for sheep meat and wool.
We would honestly achieve more by posting slow-cooker lamb recipes and knitting patterns on our Facebooks but hey-ho, I love a good rumble and grumble as much as anyone else...

gone up the hill · Sep 29, 2017

Kiwi Pete said:
Lamb is far to expensive and inconvenient for the younger consumer.
That is far more important to a producer than anything else - but beating everyone over the heads with a CAP pool noodle is far more productive, and achieves much more, than addressing the divisiveness, poor marketing, lack of cooperation and all the other ills ahead for sheep meat and wool.
We would honestly achieve more by posting slow-cooker lamb recipes and knitting patterns on our Facebooks but hey-ho, I love a good rumble and grumble as much as anyone else...

I have long been banging on about marketing of UK lamb ( long before the brexit vote ) trouble is the big wigs at the AHDB who we pay our money to do this see advertising as a waste of money ( even thou at a meeting I went to back along 9 out of 10 levy payers put their hand up for yes when asked if the AHDB should spend more money on marketing.

I think it was beef advertising where the head of the AHDB aka Sir Peter Kendall ( on £60k for a 2 day week btw ) said that spending £1 of levy money on advertising to achieve £8 of meat sales ( which had been proved by a third party to be the return ) was a complete and utter waste of money...

You really couldn't make it up!!!!...............................

And that is what we as UK farmers are up against!

ollie989898 · Sep 29, 2017

digger64 said:
Given that the thread was about getting out of sheep and it was said earlier that consumers tend to resist purchasing lamb retailing at over £10 /kg if we are to have consistant market share we really have got to attempt to achieve this some how with margin or we will be constantly ducking and diving price wise as imports are used to put us back to reality in the market place and losing customers /processors on the way , I don't think they import lamb because they want to

Dream on! The UK government has consistently given out messages supporting free and open markets. It is necessary to do this because we merely a little island in a huge international marketplace. And to be fair, we have coined it from the financial markets.

To have petty trade wars initiated over a bit of lamb would be political suicide and neither would I vote for it.

Kiwi Pete · Sep 29, 2017

gone up the hill said:
I have long been banging on about marketing of UK lamb ( long before the brexit vote ) trouble is the big wigs at the AHDB who we pay our money to do this see advertising as a waste of money ( even thou at a meeting I went to back along 9 out of 10 levy payers put their hand up for yes when asked if the AHDB should spend more money on marketing.

I think it was beef advertising where the head of the AHDB aka Sir Peter Kendall ( on £60k for a 2 day week btw ) said that spending £1 of levy money on advertising to achieve £8 of meat sales ( which had been proved by a third party to be the return ) was a complete and utter waste of money...

You really couldn't make it up!!!!...............................

And that is what we as UK farmers are up against!

I really do think any efforts now are going to be too little, too late- yes there will always be demand for a nice bit of lamb- but I personally feel the damage has been done.
I was just saying in a PM that it is rapidly appearing to be akin to checking the Titanic's windows are all shut, lamb is no longer the go-to in modern society- a very sad state of affairs really.
Incredible to think of it like that, what are the options for hill farmers of the future?
Especially you guys with expensive land, public enemy no.1, all the hoops of a travelling circus.... and a marketing team that should be on the rack at Tesco with an apple up each orifice

gone up the hill · Sep 29, 2017

ollie989898 said:
Dream on! The UK government has consistently given out messages supporting free and open markets. It is necessary to do this because we merely a little island in a huge international marketplace. And to be fair, we have coined it from the financial markets.

To have petty trade wars initiated over a bit of lamb would be political suicide and neither would I vote for it.

The trouble with you is that you are anti UK livestock farming as they come which is very strange given you job is in the farming industry!

gone up the hill · Sep 29, 2017

Kiwi Pete said:
I really do think any efforts now are going to be too little, too late- yes there will always be demand for a nice bit of lamb- but I personally feel the damage has been done.
I was just saying in a PM that it is rapidly appearing to be akin to checking the Titanic's windows are all shut, lamb is no longer the go-to in modern society- a very sad state of affairs really.
Incredible to think of it like that, what are the options for hill farmers of the future?
Especially you guys with expensive land, public enemy no.1, all the hoops of a travelling circus.... and a marketing team that should be on the rack at Tesco with an apple up each orifice

Never too late to do marketing.

Trouble is the likes of the AHDB will spend a little of our levy money on very poor/ outdated advertising campaigns which tbh aren't worth the paper they are written on.

Very clear they do this so they fail and can then say advertising doesn't work so they can then spend the money on catchy phrase's like KPI/ knowledge exchange etc which in reality doesn't help farmers one iota but makes them at AHDB look smart and clever.

The AHDB mantra is increase production/ cut costs and sell as cheap as possible...

Al R · Sep 29, 2017

gone up the hill said:
Never too late to do marketing.

Trouble is the likes of the AHDB will spend a little of our levy money on very poor/ outdated advertising campaigns which tbh aren't worth the paper they are written on.

Very clear they do this so they fail and can then say advertising doesn't work so they can then spend the money on catchy phrase's like KPI/ knowledge exchange etc which in reality doesn't help farmers one iota but makes them at AHDB look smart and clever.

The AHDB mantra is increase production/ cut costs and sell as cheap as possible...

What's kpi?

The ahdb and all of the other red meat companies should all be working around the clock tonight to make an advert to present first thing in the morning when people are waking up and hearing about the 2 Sister chick scandal. Capitalisation has won many wars!

digger64 · Sep 29, 2017

[QUOperformance post: 4309186, member: 7565"]What's kpi?

The ahdb and all of the other red meat companies should all be working around the clock tonight to make an advert to present first thing in the morning when people are waking up and hearing about the 2 Sister chick scandal. Capitalisation has won many wars![/QUOTE]
Key perfomance indicator - which is your favourite spanner ?

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