continued
Yabby
You have done your homework on my threads, well done. Here is a more accurate description.

19 years ago: Farmer paid $1.00 per sheep, today they fetch from $70+ . Imagine the uproar if we butchers raised our prices to 70 times as much. You would have grounds to complain then.

As for me complaining about farmers. We have seen farmers getting drought relief for the past 10 years then, when it finally rains, flood relief.

What about the businesses who rely on the farmers for their existence. They have mortgages, families, education expenses etc, why don’t they get relief. What about the businesses that suffered from the cyclone up north. Did they get assistance from the government when they went out of business?

Some or several carriers used to take the bananas from up north to market. What happened to them when there were no bananas, did they get relief from the government of did they do what everyone else has to do, claim it on insurance, if they can afford the premiums.

You see it is the farmers that get relief when times are tough while the rest of the community suffers.

They should be mad pay back the relief when they return a profit. It is the biggest scam going and what do they do when the dollar drops and export demand increases, they sell to the highest bidder. Overseas or interstate!

The reason why so many farmers struggle to run their farms is because they insisted that their children gained an education. The only thing they didn’t account for was that once educated, the children realised that farming was to hard and not worth the effort.

I don't hate farmers, infact we rely on them for most of our daily needs. It's just that they are the first to put their hand out when it rains and the first to cry poor when it doesn't.

They sell to the highest bidder don't care if that bidder is OS while enjoying the fruits of our (the tax peyers) labor when they have a rough trot.

rehctub and Belly,
If yopu want the story from the exporters point of view try LiveExportsCare.com. I would like to see all stock slaughtered here but that is a long way off. I have reservations about acheiving that goal simply because of the high costs processors here encounter. This results in exporters being able to pay farmers 2-3 times more than the local processors. It is not reasonable to expect farmers to take lower prices of that magnatude.

Sheep exporters handle about twice the number of sheep than the local processors do for export. To make inroads into the exporters share there is a need to expand facilites here and at delivery points. that is big dollars, coupled with our high costs here there would be a relunctance to invest. Then there are issues of getting specialist staff and time taken for customers to fully accept the new form of product. So there are many obstacles, not to mention resistance from the exporters.

I do not beleive that meat is dear judging by prices quote in posts here. Prices have to be converted to a per serve basis.

Lamb leg @ $25 = about $5 per serve
Whole rumps @$6 k = $3 per serve
Mince @$8 k =10 rissoles @ $1.60 per serve
Blade stk $7 k (stewed) =4 serves@ $1.75 serve.
Rump @$9 K = 2 serves @ $4.50 serve
Neck chops @ $8 k =4 serves (stewed) @ $2 per serve
American ribs @$9 k= 2 serves @$4.50 perserve

From my freezer, Purchassed at Coles
Thin beef sausages approx 40c each = 4 perserve =$1,60
Chump chops approx $2 each, 2 per serve =$4 per serve
Lamb Loin chops Approx $2 each, 3 perserve = $6 per serve
Fillet Stk @$5 piece 2 per serve = $10 perserve

This may vary a bit depending on size of serve, but one should be able to have one good cooked meal with meat per day at say $6 per day.

compare that to a cup of coffee.

I do not think yabby is that type of farmer rehctub look I love to take the shall we say Micky while meaning something else out of some farmers.
The ones who have sons named after Scottish breads of cattle Angus and Brangus you know the ones.
Let us not however forget we once did in fact ride on the sheep's back.
Before mining we had not much more than farming to keep our balance of payments under control.
The old country party did have Socialism for the land as its platform.
But Australia wanted and still does a viable rural industry.
We must confront our balance of trade ,make more here and such but most of our meat will always be exported and some markets will not buy other than live.
It is not our farmers or butchers who control prices, those bananas are a case in point prices have not settled even now to near pre cyclone days more rots than ever but prices stay high.

*Imagine the uproar if we
butchers raised our prices to 70 times as much.*

Rehctub, you clearly missed the point. 1$ for a lamb is clearly not viable.
The point is, even if we gave you the sheep for free, consumers would still pay
plenty, as all the middle men take their cut.

I’ve been told by butchers that a lamb owes them anything from 185-300$.
If they paid 40$ or 70$ for it, hardly matters. The cost from the farm gate
to the consumer is far greater then what is paid to producers.

Lets look at some figures. 20c worth of wheat is in your loaf of bread.
40c worth of milk is what producers are paid per litre.
Potatoes are worth 20c a kg to the farmer, McDonalds charge you 18$ a kg.
Meat is around 90c-3$ a kg for the farmer, the rest are middle men mark ups.

Still today, thousands of lambs are sold for 5-10 bucks a head. They are store
lambs, not good enough for today’s high standard of consumer demand for
grain fed feedlot lambs.

*We have seen farmers getting drought relief for the past 10
years*

Hang on, don’t blame farmers as a whole, for what has been paid to some
NSW and Queensland farmers, who have political influence. I don’t know
a single farmer around here who ever got Govt subsidies for drought etc.

I have no problem with cancelling all payments to any industry, as long as
its across the board, let the free market rule. No more billions to the car industry,
no more billions to manufacturing, no more billions to other Govt pet projects.
Use that money to get rid of payroll tax, so we have a level playing field.

Check your figures. Virtually zilch in subsidies has been paid to Western Australian
Farmers, who are the exporters of most of Australia’s live sheep. We tend to paddle
our own canoe here.

I have no problem with the fact that Australians should pay international prices for
their food. For they are the lowest prices on the planet.

rehctub,

I took it the American ribs in my post @ $9 k, were what are also called American Ribeye Steak or Cattlemans Cutlets. Which I have had and are very good on the Bar-b-que.

Maybe the poster who first mentioned was simply referring to soup or stock bones and if so the price does sound high to me.

Anyway posters can put their own prices on the meat, then convert it to servings before comparing. I do not think I would have any trouble getting by on $5 for meat per day.

Yabby

We have the largest plant for beef here in QLD and some other players.

However we are there red neck of live export of beef as well.

More beef goes from QLD NT than anywhere else live.

In NT they did have to close the wet season but not so in many areas of QLD.

Yet these plants have closed re opened and closed again.
Why? Short of supply. Right now there are operations underway to build plants in Malaysia Indonesia to slaughter animals being shipped in live from QLD NT and elsewhere in Australia.

They see themselves as the Halal hub of the world and through JAKIM accreditation through to Saudi and ME

So did you hear me the first time? They are building plants with Aussie tax payer’s money to slaughter in Indonesia and Malaysia and send to ME and elsewhere.

Actually they are building a whole port just to service the stock and meat exports. It’s a multu trillion dollar industry.

So please people do not tell us they insist on them live for religious purpose in ME.

It’s very simply really. They want them live to provide employment and a strong value adding economy.

Now it was supposed to be we slaughtered them here and sent them in whole carcass to JAKIM

Just goes to show you however what a joke the live export industry are when they continue to pull the whiskers of the general public by claiming – Oh they must have them live and there is no refrigeration .

Prices are going to go through the roof for meat.

You haven’t seen anything yet.