Press Release - SUCKLER BEEF: best offer 3 for 5: Buy while stocks last

SUCKLER BEEF: best offer 3 for 5: Buy while stocks last

Beef from the British suckler herd is amongst the best you can get. And beef farmers in the UK are currently offering supermarkets and butchers their best ever offer – a 3 for 5 offer. It sounds fantastic...read on....

Suckler beef currently earns the UK farmer less than £3 per kilo. Yet the same beef costs the farmer over £5 per kilo to produce. These are not figures cooked up by farmers but shown by a whole series of independent studies. Why on earth would any beef farmer ever want to offer such a fantastic bargain?

Well the answer is serious – beef prices have been so low for so long – always below the cost of production because of distortions in the market place, primarily government intervention and support on an international scale.

And yet some consumers comment that beef is “so expensive” – but they should remember cheaper meats such as chicken and pork come with bone as does the more expensive lamb meat – and the consumer bins the bone despite paying for it.

So maybe beef is not so expensive after all, particularly when the high health benefits are taken into account. Any increase in the price of beef is going to seem expensive. But it is the right way to go.

The other answer is in the supply chain dynamics – farmers as micro businesses have become price takers while other more powerful forces, driven largely by profit and loss accounts, are able to set the price in the UK market. Even specialty farmers like organic farmers are in the same boat – they cannot make money in the current market.

What is so different now and why does it matter? What’s different is that the gap between costs and sales is growing and growing fast. All farm input prices are increasing fast and revenue is flat.

The stark reality is that the farmers are offering too good a bargain – cheap food at an unsustainable price.

Why does it matter? Simply because our farmers are the nation’s most important environmental land managers.

Without suckler cows producing such good beef, the landscape would alter dramatically. Remember most of the UK’s land area cannot be ploughed and many conservation bodies are now struggling with reversing rough grass and scrub at great cost.

There is no easy solution but 3 for 5 is too good a bargain. The NBA urges stakeholders, including government, the beef supply chain, farmers and consumers to co-operate and find a solution that everyone can afford, including the farmer.    
 
For more information contact:

Kim Haywood, NBA director.  Tel. 0131 336 1754