Beefing up the finishing sector

With the bulk of Scotland’s cattle finished in relatively few hands, there is “considerable opportunity” to improve the efficiency of the beef sector, new research published by Scotland’s Rural College claimed this week.

The research found that the sector was dominated by a small number of large businesses, with 20 per cent of the largest businesses accounting for 80 per cent of the prime stock – and concluded that by focusing on these producers, fast results on the industry’s overall performance could be achieved.

Steven Thomson, senior agricultural economist with the college, said: “As the beef finishing sector – and rearing sector to a lesser extent – is heavily concentrated on relatively few large-scale businesses, some policy outcomes can likely be achieved more quickly by focusing attention on the largest businesses.

“Notwithstanding the need to match finished cattle supply to the daily and weekly abattoir throughput demands, there is likely scope to drive some performance efficiency as our ongoing analysis is revealing.”

But while the report highlighted that this route was best for short-term targeted policy actions related to issues such as finishing weights and the length of time to finish cattle, achieving longer-term changes outwith a single production cycle – such as genetic uplift and improvements to breeding stock – needed to consider a much wider pool of producers.

The work also concluded that future policy should consider positioning Scotch Beef as a high-quality, slow-finishing, grassreared product, in order to differentiate it from more intensive beef production in competitor nations.