Be a Beef team player

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 BE A BEEF TEAM PLAYER
‘WE’RE not Brazil, we’re Northern Ireland,’ chant our local soccer fans and so say the province’s beef producers.
We are Northern Ireland farmers producing quality beef to meet the highest animal welfare, health and hygiene standards in the European Union.
We are UK farmers meeting those exacting standards found across the four home countries yet rarely receive our just reward, the same beef prices paid to our fellow UK farmers just 12 miles across the North Channel in Scotland, Wales and England.
 No wonder suckler cow numbers in the province have slumped dramatically and meat plant spokesmen express concern about cattle increasingly being supplied in small batches by farmers over or near pension age!.
The National Beef Association wants to work with plants and retailers to ensure all beef team players get a return that makes economic sense. Our processing sector needs to progress away from that dealer mentality of buying cheap on the day with no thought of protecting their long term supply base
The drift of larger producers out of beef production must be reversed by ensuring beef is no longer seen as an enterprise needing financial support from other enterprises or from off farm wages and pensions!
 The LMC suggest £3.70 a kilo as a break-even price for beef. Well the NBA seeks not only parity for producers here with other parts of the UK, but a real return on capital invested as enjoyed by businesses, such as supermarkets, further up the supply chain.
 Your National Beef Association, the only national voice of the beef sector, is fighting for a price that leaves farmers with sufficient profits not just to support their families, but to justify investment in infrastructure.
 The current situation where processors and retailers profit from redmeat yet producers make a loss is bleeding our beef sector dry. The solution is not confrontation, but hard headed business links between farmer, processor and retailer to ensure all three businesses have a viable future based on security of supplies.
 Doing nothing and not working as a beef team will leave us with a landscape denuded of stock, idle meat factories and a rural community changed forever for the worse!
 A disaster already unfolding as a glance from Belfast towards the Antrim plateau reveals. Fields on the slopes behind the city are being abandoned to scrub as farmers find suckler cows money eaters, not profit makers.
Unless the NBA call for parity of esteem for beef producers is answered our rural economy is in irreversible decline and the damage done to the environment an eco disaster in the making. A disaster a lot closer to home than ranching encroaching on the forest of the Amazon basin.
 As a farmer I long ago realised that moaning in the mart about poor prices achieved nothing. By joining the NBA one becomes part of a professional pressure group speaking out not just in this region, but at national level. Pushing decision makers in London and Brussels to save our home grown beef businesses and the countryside they help keep in care for the nation.
  Our message is positive, a profitable beef sector will allow farmers to invest in better animal genetics, clover swards, high sugar grasses and brassicas such as kale to massively reduce all our carbon footprints
 The technology is widely used in New Zealand so we beef producers just require margins to justify these investments benefiting our planet earth, farmers and consumers alike. Some real red tape free rural development.
  NBA members not only have their case put forcefully by a national organisation, but also have access to their own pro farmer, weekly market newsletter.
   As most of the knowledge taking any farm business forward comes from other farmers NBA members gain from meeting fellow producers at farm walks, talks and social events. An ideal means of keeping abreast of innovations and market trends that impact on your family income.
 To join your National Beef Association and it’s very active Northern Ireland team visit www.nationalbeefassociation.com or tel; 014134  601005.                  We may not move like David Healey, but the NBA team score goals on your behalf at home and away!
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