Farmer Focus: Beef on the up after poor start to harvest
Doug Dear © Jim Varney I’ve been asked: “How’s harvest going?” on numerous occasions, and my standard answer this year is: “Well, it’s going.”
This year, our winter crops have limped through a season of having their feet wet for seven months or more, with high disease pressure. Other wet years, we have had low-input spring crops.
In essence, we have spent the money of a 4t crop and got a 2t response. In this area, the nearer you are to a river and the lower you get to sea level, the more yields drop off. Oh, how I long for some limestone, or some Wolds land this year.
Needless to say, there’s no quit in me. I’m going to pick myself up and give it another go.
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The straw wars have started, and everyone appears to be squabbling over the crumbs.
I’m not going to quote prices as that could contribute to setting a benchmark, but they will be significantly higher than previous seasons, and we are all going to have to cast our net further for straw, with the added cost of extra haulage to boot.
With the black hole of cattle numbers becoming more apparent, and sales for beef being considerably higher at this time of the year, we have processors not only ringing for cattle, but coming to the unit daily looking for cattle.
One extra source for the processors this season has been the “grasshoppers”: progeny out of the Kiwi-cross type of cow, crossed back to the Angus.
They’re not bad sorts and flesh up really well, doing 1.7kg of liveweight gain a day. They’re not massive weights, but if the processor is going to grind them and pull the strip loins, then what does it matter? Beef is beef.
There is absolutely no point in selling unfinished cattle if they’re growing away and need more cover.
Just now, we are in the driving seat – if demand is high, and it isn’t peak season for beef, with numbers predicted to be tight for the rest of the year, why sell today when they will be worth more tomorrow?