Spring lamb prices

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119891418#Comment_119891418

It'll be incredibly difficult to survive at farming now without maximising subsidies. Farmers will have to consider extensive farming now. It'll be a joke and a real backward step but the organic payments are hard to ignore,

It'll be difficult for farmers like me who had a career at intensive farming to get their head around extensive farming but intensive farming wasn't worth the bother either, the profit came from the subsidies then too.

Jjameson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119891787#Comment_119891787

Cattle will never be scarce, they also have some wonderful characteristics. A willingness to try and live.. a strand of electric fence keeps them where they are supposed to be. It’s not sheep getting scarce I see, they are prolific enough breeders , it’s sheep farmers I see every where around me in decline.

Who replaced Mr and Mrs wrangler for example.

north Wexford in my youth was the home of 33 butchers reduced to just 2 , and the best Suffolk sheep in these islands of up to 10 thousand went through enniscorthy mart every week. A thousand is a massive big sale now. At 42 years of age I’d be a whipper snapper amongst those leaving in a few sheep.

If there’s no money in them young people will not bother with them.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119892275#Comment_119892275

Outside of west of Ireland producers of large numbers of stores/light lambs,you'll be hard pushed to find someone younger than you at sheep fulltime

I remember growing up,there used be sheds of lambs fattened for butchers market and the ould lad getting maybe 30 pound for 50 kilo lambs,almost noone deos it now....lowland sheep numbers will die off quickly enough,as most good low land producers were at it,as the figures for cattle/sucklers didn't stack up,if sheep figures don't stack up,and it's more profitable to do likes of rear dairy heifers,thats what will happen

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119892298#Comment_119892298

I can't understand well educated young people going farming, even ten years ago it was difficult to understand........ if farmers families got a job they'd be mortgage free whenever the parents would die if they sold the farm.

Even John Fagan with his massive farm is beginning to wonder what he's at.

Surprising thing is that sheep numbers have only dropped 2% in 2021, but it went up the year before

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119892275#Comment_119892275

Something for you there J

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kk.man

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119892275#Comment_119892275

Plus 1. Kilkenny mart be lucky to have 400 in on a Monday. It's probably unprofitable to keep it going but Thursday cattle make up for it. No young person wants sheep, a few might do cattle (part time) but dairy is king around here now.

Jjameson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119892722#Comment_119892722

Precisely true. And that emphasises my point. Processing industry perpetually dragging lamb price is going to hurt themselves in the medium to long term. If there’s no twist in ewes they won’t be kept by younger farmers for the love of them.

Tileman

I think numbers went up during covid as people were able to work from home and made it manageable. Now that just are back to commuting and the rat race lots of lads getting out of them again.

Jjameson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119893109#Comment_119893109

The rise in price along with stable enough meal and fert price made them an attractive proposition. Ivermectin resistance has kicked in this year in the south east, poor thrive in the summer drought, good thrive initially in September but poor thrive in the the preceding monsoon, meal simply not a viable proposition and with fat lamb price setting the bar for store lambs there is no love for them in this part of the country.

ewe numbers are falling around me and I’d take a bad offer myself at the minute the way I feel about them at the minute.

tax free rent is looking very good.

Sami23

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119891418#Comment_119891418

Don't know where your pulling those wage increases from.

I know for a fact be lucky if you got even a 5% increase this year 🤷‍♂️

eire23

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119892706#Comment_119892706

A lot of people would kill to have the place John Fagan has wrangler. He should count himself lucky, not everyone is as fortunate.

It's near impossible to get land to rent around here so the line of thought that people are getting out/quitting or cutting back doesn't ring true in this neck of the woods. Also I can't see sheep numbers dropping for a long time yet. Ya always here people saying no one wants the bother of lambing but every year people forget the hassle of lambing, probably decide to keep a few extra sheep around july/agust time and let the ram out again. Maybe the next 5-10 years will tell a different story as lads in their 50's now start to cut back but time will tell.

Box09

Many private sector employers gave cost of living bonuses, lots of friends got them, 3k being the most common figure pre tax. Many private employers giving pay rises on top, at least 5 to 10 percent in good professions. Strong Public sector pay deal of 6.5 plus what was already agreed.

Single farm payment is a joke as not index linked. No young folk entering farming. Then you ring the factory to sell some lambs and they make you feel like sh!t.

Sheep farming is not sustainable. Rising interest rates, 5-600 electricity bills for average house. Weekly shopping bills. You'd be better off working in McDonald's on a Saturday rather than sheep farming now.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119892706#Comment_119892706

It's a bit like fishing,some people have a calling towards it

I see lads around here,who left jobs/careers,where they'd easy be making north of 80K by now to go skipper trawlers,and said to me,they simply couldn't settle into office/technical jobs

It's the great contradiction of farming,those who are best at/most driven by profit,could easily earn multiples in ordinary enough jobs....money isn't the sole motivation for many of people,otherwise the country would be full of drug dealers/high profile criminals

Lano Lynn

so the government is imposing a 'windfall tax ' on power companies 'excessive profits' could this model be used on the tonnes of meat the factories don't pay for on 'overweight' lambs or over 30 month beef?

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119908945#Comment_119908945

Factories can refuse to take lambs over 23kgs or reduce the price per kg on a carcase over 23kgs.

If they don't want a high percentage of heavy lambs, they shouldn't have to take them

A cut off weight is a blunt way of doing it alright, reducing the price/kg is probably a better way for overweight lambs but you might have to get to 25kg to equal the 23kg cut off price

Dickie10

id be with a lot here saying ewe numbers will fall, i think a few got into them during covid but will be gone as quick again. i would expect a lot of tillage land around me up for lease and sale when new cap is in limiting payments to 60k. the bigger tillage farmers were used to 80-200k will not bother taking land again. the sfp was thier insurance against a bad harvest i feel.

Jonnyc135

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119910927#Comment_119910927

No incentive for natural Irish hard wood forestry either, good money for the first 20 years and f'all after that and hard woods will be nearly at least 2 generations before they are ready for harvesting. Hard to see where farming is going, their all about carbon farming now but until farmers can claim, trade and offset their credits that system will never work.

Watched a meeting on oireachtas TV regarding this yesterday and all in all it looks quite bleak regarding carbon farming. A lot of gibberish about the new acres and how in order to get the full acres payments the water table would have to be raised in the field to 1m of the topsoil, this would then ensure carbon storage wetland species of grass to grow where maximum points would be given out. Its looks like acres is a way for them to use farmers on poorish land to effectively re wet their land, store carbon and gets absolutely none of the reward for it (carbon offset or money) as they will be sold at an EU level by the government who actually don't own the carbon and have specifically said they don't own it. How can the sell it among EU member states if they don't own it?, makes 0 sense.

Dickie10

or whats more realistic to happen in 20 years time when thousands of farm and farming families have finally given up the ghost and sold out or planted thier lands, or blocked drains and left it go wild to grow rushes and briars, nettles, thistles and the odd cow or two roaming 10 acres, the government and EU will hit the panic button when thier is a food scaricity issue over war or disease and the big push will reverese then and the government will be all about rampping up food production. it may be nearer to 10 years than 20 when this happens.

Jonnyc135

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119911311#Comment_119911311

Yeah it really begars belief what those bureaucrats in the EU think. Have they not learned their lesson from gift Russia a BRICS nation our energy security. Now they want to gift Brazil another BRICS nation our food security. Crazy stuff, they are really away with the fairies.

I think the future of farming realistically here has to go somewhat carbon neutral, but in order to get there we have to be allowed offset our co2 that we are actively storing. The sad things is they will probally never allow that in our industry, yet the biggest polluting industries and companies can easily offset and claim they are carbon neutral. The EU has their very own Emmisions trading scheme (ETS) design in such away that allows those companies do that yet the farmers are always on the hind tit and locked out.

Fun fact the EPA runs the ETS for Ireland not the government, its what they have gotten way too much power for non elected officials of an NGO.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119911311#Comment_119911311

Tbh most of them farms you do be on about of substantial size likely to come up to let long term,will be snapped up dairy farmers as 2nd/3rd units and be run near entirely by immigrant labour on fcuk all wages......there's no risk of em ever going wild again

eire23

€7 meant to be on go in Kildare. We're 6.80 at the start of the week.

Young95

About time !!

Robson99

What weights are they paying to now

daviddenis

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119917652#Comment_119917652

22kg

Bleating Lamb

What price are cull ewes at moment?

Young95

Any quotes got for Monday?

White Clover

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119925304#Comment_119925304

No, all gone with a while. Seems a bit of positivity in the market. What have you been quoted? Are they at 7 now?

Young95

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119925866#Comment_119925866

Wasn’t quoted anything.. have a good few to go in the next two weeks so just waiting to pull the trigger.

Box09

6.80

Tileman

Was told tonight they were only 6.80 to 22. I queried we’re they not closer to 7€ and agent said not yet but fleshy lambs were in very short supply and they will go up a bit between now and Xmas