Beef, farming, rural Ireland...are their complaints legitimate?

markodaly

Surprised there has been no thread about this issue, that has been gathering a lot of press attention lately.

What are peoples opinion on these issues?

There is a lot of talk about beef and the death of that industry in Ireland, but maybe they overplayed their hand and the market is shifting. If your product is solely relied on one market then perhaps you need to diversify in order to protect against external shocks.
The farmers blockading the processing plants seem to be quite militant and to be honest, it will all end in tears. They appear to have engaged in this dispute with no end game.

Farming, in general, has been doing very well, lately. Just ask the dairy farmers. Not much complaints from them when they are exporting record amounts of dairy products to new markets like China.

I suppose this ties in with the complaints about rural Ireland, that Dublin always gets everything, yet the average Dub renter or worker stuck in traffic will not share that sentiment. The Dublin economy along with the likes of Cork and Limerick, by and large, subvents the rest of the country.

Issues about post offices, lack of jobs, one off housing, transport, pubs closing, schools, hospitals, get a lot of airplay, yet a lot of these issues are self-inflicted because of insane one-off housing planning laws.

Also, we do not even talk about the global trend. 200,000 people per day, move to cities in the world. Ireland was always a rural economy and country, we never had an industrial revolution so we remained an agrarian society, by and large. Since the 70s though this has started to change and we are just catching up with the global norm. We still have a few decades to go in this process.

Yet, rural Ireland complains, endlessly. Some complaints are valid, broadband for example, but I see it not as a rural vs urban debate, its more of a planning and long term view debate. We as a country are not great at executing plans, as we always interfere politically.

There are a lot of pros living in rural ireland, the biggest is cheaper housing. One can buy a nice 4 bed house in many parts of the country for about €200,000. That won't buy you a hovel in Dublin.

Rural Ireland would be a lot better served if it acted and elected more thoughtful representatives who would fight to expand their towns and villages rather than fight for handouts, accept one-off planed houses as the norm and expect the world stop and revert back to the 1950s, as if it was all wonderful then.

In other words, rural Ireland needs less of the Jackie Healy Rae types and more of the people who brought you the Westport Greenway.

freedominacup

The beef protest is not the only thing likely to end in tears.

riffmongous

To some extent yeah, I'd rather see the farmers get the money than the factory owners. However once they start putting other ordinary workers out of a job then it gets a bit harder to stick by them..

jam_mac_jam

I think a lot of problems go back to the planning of one off housing instead of living in villages or near villages in small clusters. The reliance on the car is what has killed pubs and post offices. If people lived and shopped in the villages then they wouldn't be dying. Instead they choose bigger houses and driving everywhere. Broadband would be a lot easier to provide to ten houses then to one.

I think its very sad actually, what happens when your children grow up and move to a city, you are just left rattling round a huge old house on your own and you can't even go for a pint because you live too far away. the countryside is dying and cars are a big part of that. If you live near others you can use a bike to go to the post office or walk.

In France and the UK the rural settlement is much more village based and is much nicer for it. I don't see why a farmer needs to live right on the farm in all cases. Whatever about the farmer, I don't see why all his kids need to.

However as a city dweller I am a monster for bringing this up, how dare I the countryside is not for me, its for the people who live in it. how date I comment on the view and how could you live in a tiny little box, etc, etc.

When its gone though and Ireland is filled with old empty mc mansions and holiday homes we are going to miss having a countryside.

Danzy

This is an industry where all grading machines are different in Ireland but meant to be the same and verified acrosd Europe , where factories are repeatedly caught for excess trim but fined only thousands or not at all, who put horse meat as beef, who had one of the biggest political corruption tribunals named after the industry, who have a history of mislabeling and product tampering, who have no fear of law or regulation and no reason to fear them.

That is just for a brief starter.

The level of corruption and criminality in the beef industry is a serious political and economic cancer in this country.

Danzy

riffmongous wrote: »

To some extent yeah, I'd rather see the farmers get the money than the factory owners. However once they start putting other ordinary workers out of a job then it gets a bit harder to stick by them..

There are 100k beef farmers in Ireland and half as many in related sector roles, more in the wider agri sector.

In terms of capital retained in the country, the agri sector leaves more in the Irish economy than Multi national sector does.

Aren't they also workers.

riffmongous

Danzy wrote: »

There are 100k beef farmers in Ireland and half as many in related sector roles, more in the wider agri sector.

In terms of capital retained in the country, the agri sector leaves more in the Irish economy than Multi national sector does.

Aren't they also workers.

I'm referring to the plant workers affected by the current shutdowns incase its not clear.

Danzy

riffmongous wrote: »

I'm referring to the plant workers affected by the current shutdowns incase its not clear.

I'm aware of that.

riffmongous

Danzy wrote: »

I'm aware of that.

Then I'm afraid I didn't get your post

Danzy

riffmongous wrote: »

Then I'm afraid I didn't get your post

However once they start putting other ordinary workers out of a job then it gets a bit harder to stick by them......


To quote yourself.

Thelonious Monk

It feels like they all think they have a God given right to earn loads of money from keeping cattle. Even if it means the tax payer propping them up.
Then people talk about paying them to do other stuff with the land. Why should we? Not all of us eat beef and dairy.
I struggle financially sometimes but I've changed career over the years. No job is secure these days, I'm sick to death listening to them.

Chacha97

Just a thought, could the beef farmers be employed by the processors?
Like the processors buy the cattle, pay for the costs of reading them(feed etc) and employ the farmers with a salary to raise the cattle varying on the amount they can rear on their land? Granted they may not receive any grants personally anymore but they would would be in the same boat as receiving a salary as everyone else but still own their own land etc

careless sherpa

From what I have heard some of the protesters are not even farmers. Serious risk to the export market for iriah beef producers. If they lose market share and space on the supermarket shelves of UK stores, it may be a serious struggle to get it back. Not even accounting for the impending Brexit farce

Captain Red Beard

The processing plant owners are millionaires who fill their plants with minimum pay foreign workers as a means of wage control, pay the farmers who breed and supply the beef peanuts and are trying to spin the media that they are the ones suffering. I'd say the complaints are legitimate enough.

Thelonious Monk

Captain Red Beard wrote: »

The processing plant owners are millionaires who fill their plants with minimum pay foreign workers as a means of wage control, pay the farmers who breed and supply the beef peanuts and are trying to spin the media that they are the ones suffering. I'd say the complaints are legitimate enough.

In fairness do you think many Irish people would work in a meat processing plant these days?

Captain Red Beard

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

In fairness do you think many Irish people would work in a meat processing plant these days?

If it paid a decent wage they would. I know a couple of butchers who started in processing plants.

Thelonious Monk

Captain Red Beard wrote: »

If it paid a decent wage they would. I know a couple of butchers who started in processing plants.

well, welcome to the free market, we're better off because of it

jimgoose

Beef processors in general are not nice people, but the farmers here have mostly themselves to blame for their getting a historically raw deal - they don't really organise themselves en masse properly. Also, farms in this country are way too small to be properly viable in this day and age.

The one-off housing situation isn't going to work in the longer term either, right enough.

markodaly

I think you are correct there about small farms. About a third of beef farmers are just not competitive enough to produce beef and get a profit from it. Either they need to ship up and reform their business practices or get out of the beef business.

Danzy

Chacha97 wrote: »

Just a thought, could the beef farmers be employed by the processors?
Like the processors buy the cattle, pay for the costs of reading them(feed etc) and employ the farmers with a salary to raise the cattle varying on the amount they can rear on their land? Granted they may not receive any grants personally anymore but they would would be in the same boat as receiving a salary as everyone else but still own their own land etc

Too expensive for the factory and would see a significant increase in food cost on the shelf.

People aren't willing to pay the cost of food as is, there would be some backlash to your proposals

Danzy

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

In fairness do you think many Irish people would work in a meat processing plant these days?

I did, it used pay well, now it doesn't and the Labour have accommodation etc deducted as well.

You couldn't live on it.

jimgoose

Danzy wrote: »

I did, it used pay well, now it doesn't and the Labour have accommodation etc deducted as well.

You couldn't live on it.

Yes, lots of youngfellas (and not-quite-so-youngfellas) did it in the old days, the work was rather unpleasant but the wage was decent. All different now, mind.

Danzy

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

It feels like they all think they have a God given right to earn loads of money from keeping cattle. Even if it means the tax payer propping them up.
Then people talk about paying them to do other stuff with the land. Why should we? Not all of us eat beef and dairy.
I struggle financially sometimes but I've changed career over the years. No job is secure these days, I'm sick to death listening to them.

If you eat grains or veg etc they are also subsidized, this is across the world.

People want cheap food and aren't willing to pay fair price, again this is global.

Politicians know that the one thing that always makes people angry is hunger, so cheap food has been a policy for decades.

No politician will stop subsidies because in fear of the electoral response. Let them eat cake.

To a degree it might not matter, with the Mercosour deal, the plan seems to be to reward Brazil and their fires in exchange for soya and beef.

If the same practices there were allowed here, I could readily beat Brazilian beef.

That means no environmental standards, no restrictions on medicine and growth hormones.

People don't want that, or more truthfully they do not want to see it. Better to reward economically and rail about it on t.v. but drive it on all the same.

Thelonious Monk

Danzy wrote: »

If you eat grains or veg etc they are also subsidized, this is across the world.

People want cheap food and aren't willing to pay fair price, again this is global.

Politicians know that the one thing that always makes people angry is hunger, so cheap food has been a policy for decades.

No politician will stop subsidies because in fear of the electoral response. Let them eat cake.

To a degree it might not matter, with the Mercosour deal, the plan seems to be to reward Brazil and their fires in exchange for soya and beef.

If the same practices there were allowed here, I could readily beat Brazilian beef.

That means no environmental standards, no restrictions on medicine and growth hormones.

People don't want that, or more truthfully they do not want to see it. Better to reward economically and rail about it on t.v. but drive it on all the same.

Right but don't we export 90% of beef and dairy? If we only produced enough for our own people maybe propping them up wouldn't cost so much and it wouldn't be a problem.
I don't eat beef but I can never understand how a can of beer or a packet of asparagus costs the same as a steak. They require far less time and resources to produce. I think we just produce way too much of it.

Danzy

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

Right but don't we export 90% of beef and dairy? If we only produced enough for our own people maybe propping them up wouldn't cost so much and it wouldn't be a problem.
I don't eat beef but I can never understand how a can of beer or a packet of asparagus costs the same as a steak. They require far less time and resources to produce. I think we just produce way too much of it.

It's European wide, global wide.

Pay a fair price for your beer and asparagus in that case, open up the purse. They are still under priced.

It doesn't matter if your a Vegan, subsidy is keeping you in cheap food, benefiting you in countless ways even if by some magic you don't eat.

If the end consumer in Europe has to pay costs, there would be political turmoil, industrial turmoil etc.

The bottom 3/4s of society get hungry too.

Donald Trump

markodaly wrote: »

There is a lot of talk about beef and the death of that industry in Ireland, but maybe they overplayed their hand and the market is shifting. If your product is solely relied on one market then perhaps you need to diversify in order to protect against external shocks.

There is not "one market", however the processors are a small number of wealthy companies that the farmer must deliver his product to. There is no real competition.

markodaly wrote: »

Farming, in general, has been doing very well, lately. Just ask the dairy farmers. Not much complaints from them when they are exporting record amounts of dairy products to new markets like China.

See above. Farmers do not have access to "new markets". Milk producers are generally signed into contracts with their milk factory. The contracts are generally along the line of "we'll pay you a 1c per litre more premium than our base price and in return, you must supply us exclusively for the next X years". Now that might sound nice but the processor sets the base price at their own whim (last week one of the larger ones, Glanbia, decided to drop its base price by 1c). and again, competition is non existent. the individual farmer has no choice except for the binary produce or give up. Easy enough you think until you learn that many have made capital investments of hundreds of thousands of Euros. And the producers are literally creaming it (no pun intended)

markodaly wrote: »

I suppose this ties in with the complaints about rural Ireland, that Dublin always gets everything, yet the average Dub renter or worker stuck in traffic will not share that sentiment. The Dublin economy along with the likes of Cork and Limerick, by and large, subvents the rest of the country.

Issues about post offices, lack of jobs, one off housing, transport, pubs closing, schools, hospitals, get a lot of airplay, yet a lot of these issues are self-inflicted because of insane one-off housing planning laws.

Lazy soundbyte. Hospitals/post-offices close in large towns and relatively large urban centres outside of Dublin. This shite about 1-off housing being the root of all evil is just that - shite

markodaly wrote: »

Also, we do not even talk about the global trend. 200,000 people per day, move to cities in the world. Ireland was always a rural economy and country, we never had an industrial revolution so we remained an agrarian society, by and large. Since the 70s though this has started to change and we are just catching up with the global norm. We still have a few decades to go in this process.

Yet, rural Ireland complains, endlessly. Some complaints are valid, broadband for example, but I see it not as a rural vs urban debate, its more of a planning and long term view debate. We as a country are not great at executing plans, as we always interfere politically.

There are a lot of pros living in rural ireland, the biggest is cheaper housing. One can buy a nice 4 bed house in many parts of the country for about €200,000. That won't buy you a hovel in Dublin.

Rural Ireland would be a lot better served if it acted and elected more thoughtful representatives who would fight to expand their towns and villages rather than fight for handouts, accept one-off planed houses as the norm and expect the world stop and revert back to the 1950s, as if it was all wonderful then.

In other words, rural Ireland needs less of the Jackie Healy Rae types and more of the people who brought you the Westport Greenway.

Nobody is asking for handouts. They are protesting for fairness. Same as what triggered the 1913 lockout. I'm sure if there was a boards.ie back then you might have been on it giving out about workers looking for handouts.


The simple fact is that the current system is unsustainable. The factory owners are happy to kill the golden goose and get their money now. But the farmers cannot be expected to continue to produce at a loss. The problem is that it can take, say, 2.5 years to rear an animal. It's not something that you can turn on and off like a tap. And when they are ready to be processed, they have to be done.



The sugar in your press used to grow in Ireland but now it is imported. That industry went to the wall about a decade ago but you might not be aware of it because it was not as large as beef industry. It just vanished. The processors/sellers/supermarkets are still making their profit, but there is more money flowing out of the economy now that used to stay and circulate within it. The beef processors ultimately won't care - they'll just lobby to bring it in from elsewhere. Already processed too. They can have it done at source in Brazil or wherever for lower wages. The consumer won't get the same standards...but sure feck standards until the next BSE or equivalent crisis......the money will be made and in the pocket by then. You can see how quickly they cut their own staff to take the brunt rather than the factory owners absorbing anything. Fella on the radio this morning moaning that the workers being laid off wouldn't be entitled to dole because they are Chinese and Brazilian FFS

Muahahaha

Captain Red Beard wrote: »

The processing plant owners are millionaires who fill their plants with minimum pay foreign workers as a means of wage control, pay the farmers who breed and supply the beef peanuts and are trying to spin the media that they are the ones suffering. I'd say the complaints are legitimate enough.

Would agree with this, farmers are not getting their fair share when the retailer walks away with 50% and the processor with 30%. Processors cant get Irish staff because they have driven down the price of labour and you couldnt live on it. So they are importing loads of Brazilians lads to work in the factories and paying them very low wages and then deducting even more for giving them a bunk bed in a dirty run down house. They are profiteering off the labour of both their own employees and on the labour of farmers.

Green&Red

OP, You say farmers have been doing well recently. That’s not a true statement. Dairy farmers have been doing well.

Beef farmers are reliant on subsidies, the business itself just about broke even last year and the year before and this year will not even do that, it’ll eat into those subsidies.

That’s not sustainable, you talk about diversifying but these are beef farmers, it’s not like they can grow something else. It’s beef or don’t farm. Larry Goodman has a monopoly on Irish beef and has screwed farmers over for years, it’s very close to breaking point.

That’ll result in no suckler farmers in future, why would they do it. No sucklers means less cattle into the market, reduced quality, the sector will eventually just fail.

Beef farmers are subsidised for a reason, to provide affordable quality food, people will find out very quickly that it’s not cheap to produce and less people doing so will only drive up the price. So instead you’ll have South American beef, with gods knows what antibiotics and hormones in it.

Be careful what you wish for

For what it’s worth I’d agree the protesters are very militant and if the leaders are saying it’s a good deal they should accept it. They are doing a terrible PR job

_Brian

The issue is actually really complex with the seeds of the problems going back 30 years.

A massive amount of Irish farmland isn’t suitable for any other enterprise but beef or sheep farming. Within that many farmers wouldn’t entertain farming sheep.

The current forestry schemes aren’t fit for purpose so again no real alternative there.

Add in so many older farmers who are stuck in their ways and you have a producer group whom are ripe for commercial entities to abuse and that is what is happening.

No proper impartial representing body is another problem, the IFA is in league with the processors and not reliant on farmer wishes or union subs, they are paid massive sums directly from the processors so you won’t see them rocking the boat too much.

Beef is being overproduced but that’s being government led with Teagasc constantly banging the drum of increased numbers and “efficiency” as a retort to ever decreasing margins, more stock numbers generate the age old problem with producing any commodity, when its plentiful the price drops.

suicide_circus

meat should be a lot more expensive than it is. i say that as a consumer

jam_mac_jam

Consumers need to pay more for beef. It's obviously too cheap at the moment. I would happily pay more for it if it goes to the farmer that is not the supermarket