Gerry Giggins News Today

Beef farms are generally less vulnerable to the toll of the incessant rain than highly stocked dairy farms.

Last week I spent time with some French colleagues travelling throughout Ireland, and they gave me plenty of insight into the farmer protests in their country.

The festive cheer in the beef trade is continuing into the new year, with finished beef prices continuing to harden.

An unwelcome trend on farms is the rapidly diminishing silage stocks. Many farmers are commenting on the speed at which they are heading towards the back wall of their pit.

Another effect of this year’s challenging weather has been the difficulty in saving straw suitable for any final use.

A lot of guesswork has been taken out of forage analysis since the advent of near-infra-red spectroscopy (NIR).

There are bumper maize crops throughout the country, despite the unsettled weather during the growing season.

Now that we’re nearing the end of harvest, winter beef finishers will be turning their thoughts to the three main things that affect their profitability: store prices, feed prices and finished beef prices.

With record levels of rain and little sunshine in July, the second-cut silage, hay-making and grain harvest have been thrown into turmoil.

We appear to have reached a seminal moment for the beef industry. Analysing the returns obtained by winter finishers across various production systems, there is a common trend of little or no profit.