Beef finishers continue to shuffle their cards to stay in the game

Icome from a generation that saw the EU drive production with subsidies. In the late 1970s on into the ‘80s and early ‘90s those in the beef fattening game made money. Your typical Irish fattener operated an almost totally grass-based system where, relative to factory prices, input costs were low.

There was also real competition in the system as the live trade, especially to North Africa, helped ease pressure and kept a floor under autumn factory prices.

In 1981, for example, 250,000 cattle were exported to North Africa. It was a simpler time when those killing the cattle generally owned them.

The reality today is that commercial beef finishing in Ireland is built on year round production with the big private or factory-controlled feedlots having taken over from traditional farmer-based operations.

If you’re going to survive you need a production and business plan ahead of investing in stock.

To this end, factory contracts offer a higher base price, 10-15c/kg higher, and some level of certainty, but not all processors will engage.

Big meal bills are now the norm on many finishing farms and while costs are lower in a grass-based system, the over-riding concern for many is keeping the meal bill paid.

One feeder told me: “I keep turning the cattle and paying bits off so as I can finish the next pen. You have to keep turning the cattle so as to pay for the meal.”

And who now owns the cattle in the sheds?

Stories abound of finishers who, having killed all their stock, go into the bank showing a herd register with good numbers that concealed the fact that a proportion were actually either calves or cheaper, poorer quality stores.

Keeping the numbers up so as not to appear a failure is routine in the business.

With this level of pressure, the question isn’t why do farmers do it, but how do they continue to be able to do it?

The answer appears that, like a poker player, you have to remain in the game to win.

One factory agent said to me recently: “They’re (finishers) paying big money for stores so they can’t be losing money at the other end”

Department of Agriculture figures show that for the week ending October 11, factory averages for R- 3= to U=3bullocks ran from €3.80-3.95/kg and those are just the averages meaning there was more paid.

If you’re a finisher that’s not a bad place to start as you go into 2021, even with Brexit looming.

There is also a belief among some that the spring of 2021 may see another BEAM type scheme should things go wrong.

Yet, Teagasc are right – the figures don’t really add up.

But the safety net offered by that Single Farm Payment plus a myriad of other schemes – along with the very considerable money earned off-farm by the spouses and partners in the equation – is the real story of how beef finisher households put bread on the table.

Keeping the numbers up so as not to appear a failure is routine in the business