FA to check sheep farm supplies ‘value for money’
Larry Fallon, Chairman, IFA National Sheep Committee, said sheep farmers are concerned about a number of production cost issues, and IFA intends to examine these issues.
He told farmers at a Limerick IFA meeting at Adare that IFA will also survey sheep farmers' CAP Reform plans.
He had no doubt there will be a decline in sheep numbers in the new CAP Reform regime. Already, 500,000 premium rights lying idle indicated problems in sheep production.
Mr Fallon said lamb is presently the only meat for which demand exceeds supply, and with the right marketing, it should be possible to stabilise prices.
He predicted that mountain areas will suffer heavy losses in sheep numbers under the reformed CAP.
But Ireland could lose 500,000 breeding ewes without lose of sheep meat output if efficiency on farms is improved.
He warned of greater supply and price fluctuations in the future, and said efficiency of production will be more important than ever for producers to maintain a profit margin. In this context, IFA will be looking closely at input costs. They propose to analyse all feeds supplied for sheep production and to compare the cost of veterinary treatments in this country against other sheep production regions of the world. Veterinary inputs for sheep farmers in this country seemed to be far more expensive than in New Zealand.
"What we have seen indicates that large profits are being taken on veterinary inputs in this country".
"We are looking at ways of keeping down our costs so as to give an income to producers in the future", he said.
