Your editorial is reason enough why I don’t buy your rag Andrew Meredith

[JP1]

 

[Cowabunga]

What is it in the above that you have a beef with? [pun intended].

Seems eminently sensible to me

 

[ford4000]

What is it in the above that you have a beef with? [pun intended].

Seems eminently sensible to me

I don't like the message, but it's not the messengers fault!

 

[DRC]

Seems reasonably objective to me. At least it stimulates debate.

 

[David.]

There are plenty of reasons not to buy it, but what is it about the article that you so take issue with JP?

 

[JP1]

1. The beef price is being held artificially low by processor actions
2. There is a relentless anti red meat sentiment about and the FW should say that this is unacceptable rather than siding with the processing sector that white meat is cheaper and therefore an inevitability
3. The EUROP grid , age and weight thresholds disadvantage grass fed beef systems. This should be called out along with the decline in local slaughtering and high street independent butchers put out of business
4. It's not a foregone conclusion, none of it. It reads like a suck it up lecture from Sean Rickard

 

[DrWazzock]

There aren't many commercial chicken meat producers still running Light Sussex, though are there?
Maybe its a wake up call.
Just saying.

 

[JP1]

There aren't many commercial chicken meat producers still running Light Sussex, though are there?
Maybe its a wake up call.
Just saying.

True. Who won?

 

[Bill the Bass]

I’m surprised they didn’t have an option 3; Keep Stabilisers

 

[DrWazzock]

True. Who won?

I agree with you there, it was a race to the bottom, needing thousands of birds where margins of pence per bird added up to a living. It will need a sea change in attitudes to prevent the same happening to beef and lamb.

The only hope is to market beef as an artisan type product where they are native grass fed etc. Meanwhile I have had to go Lim X native to produce what the buyers round the ring actually want. I never sell direct to abbatoirs either. Always run them in to Newark. Well done Newark LIvestock Market IMO. Decent prices and paid on the day. No waiting lists. Support your market. Direct selling to abbatoirs will kill the industry, as it did with pig and poultry.

 

[spin cycle]

FW is just mouthpiece for FA anyway...can't understand why anybody wastes their money TBH

 

[vantage]

You’d think all meat would be flying now , due to protein shortages in China, due to the huge pig slaughterings there. The lamb price in NZ has never been as high.

 

[Werzle]

Hes a f##king idiot, fw will print or promote any old cr#p if you pay them enough. If you took your farming advice from the fw you would have gone bust yrs ago. I will agree on one thing, imports f**k us over time and time again and we just stand for it like lambs to the slaughter.

 

[Cowabunga]

The article concerned is a 'commentary'. An opinion piece. Not 'advice'.
Imports are a fact of life but at least EU imports are from a level playing field of sorts and we have been protected by tariffs from the really cheap stuff from outside the EU until now and for the most part.
Fact is that the UK is a high cost producer of food and that makes it difficult to remain competitive, especially as there are very few retail companies competing for too much product and which are singular in competing to be the 'cheapest' consumer champion.

That, I'm afraid, is how the capitalist system operates and indeed how it is meant to operate. It is survival of the fittest to provide ever more competitive/cheaper goods to consumers at the bulk end, and more 'luxury' expensive niches to be filled at the top end of the market.
As far as I can see there is too much produce being offered across the whole range, both domestically and from imports at the moment, even though the Pound is relatively weak.

Certain people in power, and indeed in the agricultural industry in the UK, wish to further erode protection from the cheapest imports, for reasons only known to themselves. Not sure how that will help their finances. It won't of course and is very likely to ruin them.

 

[milkloss]

Might get slated here but I say well done for saying what no one else has the balls to. Farming orgs should be assisting producers to leave the industry, doesn’t matter if young or old, there’s too much beef around that is too expensive to produce. The smarkets etc rely on idiots like me producing things to exceptional standards in a high cost situation and getting paid no more for it.

 

[graham99]

Might get slated here but I say well done for saying what no one else has the balls to. Farming orgs should be assisting producers to leave the industry, doesn’t matter if young or old, there’s too much beef around that is too expensive to produce. The smarkets etc rely on idiots like me producing things to exceptional standards in a high cost situation and getting paid no more for it.

thats i like milk in kiwi land .
the price in the 80's would have killed all farmers today .
the price of producing it was a lot cheaper but .
mainly because of many being owner operaters or share milkers

 

[Cluny]

I have to say that the fat price seems to be £150 to £200 down on last year but still the same retail price so who’s taking that away from us?

 

[JP1]

Might get slated here but I say well done for saying what no one else has the balls to. Farming orgs should be assisting producers to leave the industry, doesn’t matter if young or old, there’s too much beef around that is too expensive to produce. The smarkets etc rely on idiots like me producing things to exceptional standards in a high cost situation and getting paid no more for it.

Whilst I can see where you're coming from (and the French even have / had a scheme for this), I don't see that that is the issue right here

I feel you fall straight in to the macro trader's trap when you say there's too much beef around. Same with the argument there's too much pork. Our sow herd is 400,000 ish and was always over 800,000 sows in times past. The Chinese (and other Nation's) sow herd has been decimated with ASF

 

[Henarar]

I have to say that the fat price seems to be £150 to £200 down on last year but still the same retail price so who’s taking that away from us?

If you got a really good deal on a new tractor would you sell your old one cheap to someone else ?

 

[Cluny]

Don’t remember ever getting a good deal on a new tractor but what I do remember when my uncle bought a brand new IH 414 for the price of 8 yearling calves l know we can’t live in the past but just shows how values have changed!