Stephen Cadogan: How the odds are stacked against Irish beef farmers
If you are one of the many cattle finishers or sheep farmers depending for your livelihood on EU direct payments, don’t expect the markets for your animals to come to your rescue any time soon, says Dr Pat McCloughan, the economic consultant retained by the IFA to investigate the state of irish meat processing sector ahead of the proposed ABPGroup/Fane Valley Group/Slaney Foods merger.
He found that price bargaining power is tilted in favour of the processors — hardly a surprise, when just six big processors buy two of every beef three cattle, from as many as 100,000 individual farmers with some beef cattle around the country.
