If the £ falls 25%

[goodevans]

The public don't give a toss about food scares if it hurts their pockets & they have short memories. I'll bet if you ask the average punter in Aldi about BSE they will just look at you vacantly. Ask about cheap horse meat & they will ask which aisle it's in.

We're hamstrung by the AHDB who won't advertise British meat as being better than any other, partly held back by EU legislation governing levy bodies.



You have some evidence of this?

I've put oestradiol implants in calves' ears in Australia while I was working there. They give a decent liveweight gain advantage for minimal cost. The cattle only saw humans once/year when we mustered them into the yards for sorting. Daily checks? Antibiotics? Tesco insisting on no single calf hutches? None of that rubbish, just an extensive low cost production system giving double digit returns on capital employed most years in northern Queensland & Western Australia.

No,but the question was why are people scared of hormone treated beef

 

[Brisel]

No,but the question was why are people scared of hormone treated beef

When you put it like that, fair enough

 

[Brisel]

Well that says more about the AHDB than anything else.

If you are convinced hormone based production is ok, then get on and petition for them to be used.

Daily checks, antibiotic legislation, no single calf pens- no one is obliged to sell to these parties?

They will be used. In our imports. Red Tractor fudges the rest.

 

[ollie989898]

They will be used. In our imports. Red Tractor fudges the rest.

Time to fudge off the red tractor then. If it isn't putting money in your pocket, why bother.

 

[Brisel]

That requires farmers to stand together which isn’t about to happen, given the one major farming union’s stance on “assurance”

Maybe without the annual handout producers will finally realise that to have a seat at the top table they might need to collaborate? Necessity is the mother of all invention after all.

 

[glasshouse]

Beards on women and tits on blokes!

thats here already!

 

[glasshouse]

The price of every input would go up 25% but our output would only rise by 15%. Someone apart from the producer will pocket the difference. That's the way it usually works.[/QUOTE

IF the pound fell 25% as it did in 92, wheat would rise by 40%
17th sept 92 wheat was £90
by 20th sept it was £140
That event launched my farming career, as we still hadnt cut much wheat that year. Early farms down the coast were all cut dried and sold.

 

[fudge]

That requires farmers to stand together which isn’t about to happen, given the one major farming union’s stance on “assurance”

Maybe without the annual handout producers will finally realise that to have a seat at the top table they might need to collaborate? Necessity is the mother of all invention after all.

Isn’t this lack of cooperation in your imagination? Loads of rural businesses are willing to cooperate if you look for them. As for Red Tractor on the arable side it’s pretty much the legal framework anyway.

 

[Brisel]

Isn’t this lack of cooperation in your imagination? Loads of rural businesses are willing to cooperate if you look for them. As for Red Tractor on the arable side it’s pretty much the legal framework anyway.

I've tried collaborating but I spend too much time hearing I not we. Some people just don't believe in working together for the common good, just see scale as a way of making more profit themselves. I buy farm inputs using the biggest buying group in Britain but don't use the biggest grain co-op in the UK any more because it cost me too much. Draw your own conclusions from that!

I take your point about RT but it does go beyond the legal minimum. It has to.

 

[fudge]

If people want to take all of the benefits of collaboration for themselves don’t collaborate with them. I would guess on the machinery front your probably too efficient to gain from collaboration anyway. We’ve benefited greatly from sharing/contracting out various jobs but from a much smaller base. Indeed most farmers of our size have more than one income stream.

 

[Woldgrain Storage]

If people want to take all of the benefits of collaboration for themselves don’t collaborate with them.

Collaboration is about sharing risk and reward, creating synergies from combined efforts, to result in benefits for all those who contribute.

 

[glasshouse]

I've tried collaborating but I spend too much time hearing I not we. Some people just don't believe in working together for the common good, just see scale as a way of making more profit themselves. I buy farm inputs using the biggest buying group in Britain but don't use the biggest grain co-op in the UK any more because it cost me too much. Draw your own conclusions from that!

I take your point about RT but it does go beyond the legal minimum. It has to.[/QUOT

 

[glasshouse]

How can a welsh hill farmer collaborate with an owner of a huge english estate?
Thats why we are powerless

 

[fudge]

How can a welsh hill farmer collaborate with an owner of a huge english estate?
Thats why we are powerless

Really if it is not working do something about it. That is developed your business in a different direction or work for someone else.

 

[Brisel]

How can a welsh hill farmer collaborate with an owner of a huge english estate?
Thats why we are powerless

Have the Welsh sheep on English estate turnips over winter with a local shepherd doing daily checks. It's not impossible when you think about it. I'm sure a well travelled man like @unlacedgecko would have a more educated & experienced view. The old stratification system of mountain ewes crossing with ever more meaty rams as they came down to the lowlands seemed to work ok.

 

[Woldgrain Storage]

A sheep farmer can collaborate with neighbours to share resources, such as labour and equipment.

I'm sure there are arable estates who want the rewards of grazing, without the costs of owning sheep. Also, there will be sheep farmers who want the rewards of lowland grazing without the daily labour costs of face to face shepherding.

Opportunities are there for businesses who are willing to explore beyond the boundaries of traditional systems.

 

[Grain Buyer]

Collaboration is about sharing risk and reward, creating synergies from combined efforts, to result in benefits for all those who contribute.

no no no, stop it........

 

[fudge]

no no no, stop it........

Trouble is your yankee bosses probably see you as part of the “dead wood”.

 

[Grain Buyer]

Trouble is your yankee bosses probably see you as part of the “dead wood”.

you've lost me........

 

[ollie989898]

The answer has to be in large co-ops as they have in the continent, some of them in Germany literally own or perform everything in house, from seed production, fertiliser purchasing right through to buying the crop, processing it, packaging it and marketing it. It must be the only way forward if the global marketplace becomes the defacto playing field and margins remain as thin as they are.
As for farm level cooperation I used to see potential synergy all day every day but rarely saw any, except one group of farms who purchased their silage making kit together AND then went the other way and had a contractor come in every morning and feed their cows with a diet feeder they had purchased collectively. Worked well and focused their minds because they were being charged per minute the contractor and his tractor were in their yard.