High price rams bad publicity

DrDunc

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Dunsyre
The sheep industry is in the doldrums.

Breeding female sales have struggled, averages little more then they were 20 years ago.

Fat price is again being lowered, and confidence in the future is arguably at an all time low.

Yet the press is full of the record prices paid by a select few ram breeders. This lunacy is preventing the public learning that commercially the industry is having to deal with input costs that have more than doubled in the last decade, while sale prices are static at best.

Surely we need to stop marketing sheep meat as a premium product, and recognise that it is a staple food for many cultures within the UK?
 

Longlowdog

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Aberdeenshire
Are Aston Martins bad for the sales of Kia cars? There is an elite in every field. Farmers need to stop the politics of envy and explain the fiscal worth of superior genetics.
Yeah, I know there are money-go-rounds and friends scratching backs but no one invests a life time of effort or buys into ped' mammals to give their gains away for 'the good of the common man'.
Sheep are not marketed as premium products per se but they are a higher cost product to produce with a quite stiff shelf price and marketing isn't going to suggest you boil your sheep when you have shelled out your hard earned coin. The ad's will attempt to promote a decent meal from a select product.
 
I underdtand that but maybe theres an ok place in between from being loaded to poor. And doesnt need spoken about quite so much.
If you agree to take part in these programmes, then you'll have to expect that any TV company will want to take your business details apart to give a picture of where your business is placed. You won't be in control of what gets aired, and if they for one minute think that you're trying to manipulate the agenda, then they'll shred you up.

It's a dangerous game to play. You need to be a PR genius to take them on.
 

Nithsdale

Member
Livestock Farmer
We go one better? Babies for a sheep farming future? Everybody grab a baby? :D:D

I'll start us off... although not a baby!

IMG_20171010_162544511_HDR.jpg


The shepherds of the future MUST have an industry in the future.
 

egbert

Member
Livestock Farmer
The sheep industry is in the doldrums.

Breeding female sales have struggled, averages little more then they were 20 years ago.

Fat price is again being lowered, and confidence in the future is arguably at an all time low.

Yet the press is full of the record prices paid by a select few ram breeders. This lunacy is preventing the public learning that commercially the industry is having to deal with input costs that have more than doubled in the last decade, while sale prices are static at best.

Surely we need to stop marketing sheep meat as a premium product, and recognise that it is a staple food for many cultures within the UK?

It has certainly made it difficult to plead poverty when negotiating with gov in the past.
 

cowboysupper

Member
Mixed Farmer
I
It has certainly made it difficult to plead poverty when negotiating with gov in the past.

I doubt decision makers pay much attention to a few headline prices in the farming press. They need evidence to support policy decisions, much of which will he derided from official economic statistics analysed over a 5-10 year period.

I remember attending a CAP meeting organised by our Department of Agriculture in NI a few years back, just before area payments came in over here. There were some arguments made by farmers about the need for coupled payments to be reintroduced as they argued it was getting harder and harder to make a living from suckler cows. The farmers said they were all going to go out of business if the economics didn’t improve. In response the official pulled out a graph which showed that since payments were decoupled in 2005, suckler cow numbers had been on a gradual increase over the 10 year period. The official said why would they subsidise a sector which appeared to be growing.

We all as farmers know that suckler beef is a low margin sector but unless there is evidence that a lot of those farms are going out of business, the reality is those officials will pay little attention and let the market take its course until something major happens.

It’s the same for sheep, as long as we keep producing, government policy is unlikely to change much apart from the ongoing pursuit of new markets and improved standards.

Most of us love our job too much to give up or change and do something else. The officials know this too.

I think arguments around sheep and Brexit have been well made and are well understood by officials. But it’s a low priority in the bigger Brexit picture. The officials will only react after the worst happens unfortunately.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.0%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 66 35.1%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.0%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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