Northern Ireland Beef Prices On The Up

By James Campbell
Irish Farmers Journal
21st Sept 2006

Prices for finished beef cattle in Northern Ireland are around 30 pence/kg above their level at this time last year. Given a steady flow of animals to the factories, the price will remain on an upward trend until Christmas.

The number of cattle on offer to local beef processors has been higher during the past couple of weeks than during most weeks of 2006. This has helped cattle buyers to keep prices steady rather than lifting them towards those in Britain.

The gap has widened between prices in NI and Britain; so much so that heavy cattle for live shipping are obtaining some very fancy prices in Ballymena mart.

There is no pile-up of stocks in factory chills. This isn't surprising, given the demand for beef in Britain. Sources within the beef trade indicate that the deficit of beef throughout the EU and the reduced volume of imports from South America this year has helped to push prices up. Traders claim that a huge amount of work is being put into convincing major retailers that beef producers need higher prices if production is to continue locally and are warning those retailers that they can't depend on foreign beef to replace local produce.

Meanwhile, the unsustainable current beef farming incomes in NI have been highlighted again. Speaking at the launch of the LMC annual report for 2005/06, LMC chairman Owen Brennan pointed to a review of published information from which the LMC has concluded that Northern Ireland beef farmers lost £125 million and the sheep sector lost a further £25 million during the year.

This is based on an assumption that farmers' drawings from their business equated to the basic agricultural wage.

Greenmount benchmarking has demonstrated that the top 25% of suckled beef producers had costs of 189p/kg of beef produced, while in 2005 the average market price was 180p/kg. The LMC chairman stressed that the Greenmount statistics do not include any drawings by the farm owner.

"Within LMC we are seeking to do all that we can to facilitate a process whereby industry and government face up to the realities of current circumstances in the industry,'' said Brennan. He added that the LMC "must continually examine how we can better serve the industry that funds our existence''.