Beef price tracker 2

I hope for the sake of the beef and tillage industry you are wrong. But I have a sick feeling you may be somewhat right but I would be somewhat hopeful beef will average better than €4/kg. Governments are not gonna fight for fair prices as they are not going to be the ones who implement policy's to make farmers cut there herds. Let the trade go wallop and it will do it itself is what they are hoping will happen. It's going on currently with the dairy sector. I hope I am wrong. All this land been bought at big prices will get lads stung big time.

Sadly I think you could be right

That’s why I asked as it’s so hard to predict with beef! The only way is a cheap simple system I think myself

Talking down the trade is making it easier for factories to drop the price whether warranted or not.

For what it’s worth, I think it will stay north of €5 and even push on a bit at certain times over the next 12 months

Thats what a lot of suckler and drystock farmers are doing and will do. But The factory will have ample supply of beef to kill from the dairy herd who are booming currently, so total head kill will not reduce till the milkmen do.

True. But there is still enough of them out there to keep the kill near 30,000, which seems to be the spot for factory price changes.

Feedlots will buy up the dairy bred calves at source and rear them to beef. Larry and Co will diverse to keep there order book full at any cost.

It's a case if how long a piece of string is. I am a pessimistic Optimist, that means I plan for the worst but expect things to be a bit better than that.

World beef prices are generally strong , you can see them here.

you just filter the country and go down to the bottom of the page to see it. Remember all prices are excluding vat so you multiple on 5.25%, to compare Irish prices.

Generally Brazil is at 3.9/kg exc vat, US 4.9 exc vat. You can ad 20 and 25c/ kg to them to get the Irish equivalent.

Interestingly the two big EU countries that were traditionally bottom of the pile, The Netherlands is 60c/ kg ahead of us for young bulls( comparing to our R3 steer price) and Poland is ahead as well. Irish processors are working at a serious margin at present IMO.

Long term I think it may be hard to sustain above 5/ kg. But countries like Australia and the US are going on and out if drought every 3-5 years. It takes them 1-2 years to recover from a drought. Brazil will probably have to stop destroying rain forrest to create new pasture.

I would not be making stupid decisions on it but beef will probably vary from 4.5-5.5 base, however in the short term grain flooding out of Ukraine/ Russia may effect it for 1-2 years when the war ends. However again this is now morea risk for milk than beef.

@j1989 Feedlots have no interest in raising calves. They would incur the full cost of bringing the animals to finish. It would also have nitrates implications for them. They need cheaply produced stores to make a profit. It not something that is compatible with feedlot production.

If you look it generally feedlots are reducing the length of time they try to have cattle. They want a more forward store every year. Many now only buy QA stores as they want the option of slaughter after the minimum number of days they have to keep to get QA and other bonuses

Ah....the Irish (everyone except the majority of farmers) Farmers Pravda

Their customers in the most require qa. The option is there for the supermarket to trace the animal based on the herd number.

Love the conspiracy theories. Maybe they don’t want fodder crisis 2024 and all that comes with it. The best growth of year is gone. If theirs bad first crops. Need to fire out manure to get the feed

I was talking to one of the bigger factory agents who is brutal negative 99.9% of the time I talk to him but he said this stunt of pulling prices isn't going to work because the cattle aren't there and the price should go up over the next while. Literally God was a boy the last time he talked up the trade.

Rubbish, they can do whatever they like.

There's no grass cattle to come down here for a good while, done f all of a thrive so far this year on grass.