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Beef farmers losing up to €120 a head on cattle

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According to Teagasc beef farmers are losing up to €120/head on cattle, with the beef base price at €4.65/ kg.

Figures show that continental cattle in autumn-toautumn beef systems are selling at a loss in the region of €120/hd at the moment, based on a price of €4.85/ kg, including QA bonuses.

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Teagasc Beef Specialist Aidan Murray said while autumn-to-autumn finishing is a lower-risk system and allows people to buy lighter cattle last autumn and put on weight as cheaply as possible, strong prices last year have made it difficult for many to make the difference back.

"The purchase price for better quality animals was €2.76/kg — so that was a lot to give on day one and harder to make it back,” he said.

Mr Murray said that plainer cattle had left farmers less exposed to current prices.

"The real advice is for people to sit down and do the sums and [think] what can I realistically afford to pay for stock and not get carried away? That might not be about buying top-end cattle, but looking being at a point of no return. Once you are there, there is no way back.

"It doesn't matter how fast or slow you approach it, it is kind of like an edge of a cli . Even if you approach it very slowly, you are going to fall if you pass this point.

"Over the past few years, we have started looking at the rate of change, especially in complex systems like climate and ecosystems, so in this study we looked at a wide range of systems, from climate to ecology to human systems.

"What we gured out was that the normalities and complexities of these systems are actually quite similar math- ematically, so regardless of what you see in the system, like a power grid or the oceanic current, mathematically they have the same features," he said.

" ese features suggest to us that any external change applied to the systems has e ects if it occurs too fast, for example, if you increase carbon emissions too fast in the atmosphere it will a ect the climate systems.” e study, published in the journal Earth System Dynamics, concludes that dangerous rates of change could trigger irreversible shifts in human and natural systems even before these critical levels are reached. more at what is value in the market and that might be a plainer animal.”

A break-even price for Friesian-type cattle, he said, is €4.49/kg, based on a purchase price of €1.74/kg, while €4.99/kg is the breakeven price for mid-category cattle bought at €2.25/kg last autumn.

With today's current price, a Friesian O grade, getting 12c/kg QA, is leaving about €70/hd in profit, while mid-range cattle at €4.49/ kg of O= and O+ grade are making around €20/hd on a price of €4.60/kg + QA.

Mr Murray said an additional risk this year was that some farmers were having to finish cattle on five or six weeks' worth of meal due to the bad weather.

However, with factory prices falling and ration at €370-400/t, industry sources noted there was a reluctance among some to "give that bit of meal” in the hope of getting a better finish and better weights.

It is therefore expected that the percentage of animals grading as fat score three will again be strong this year following the 10-year high recorded in 2022 of 62.7% for bullocks and 53.9% for heifers.

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