rehctub, I forgot to ask a few other things.

What is the handout for dead sheep? where are the handouts if meat prices take a dive?

Oh and another thing, I dont know anybody who sells their fat lambs for live export in our area, they have to be a certain weight (above average) and unfortunately we can never get them that fat....how on earth is live exporting the easy way out?

If there are meat shortages its not because of live exporting, its because the drought has forced many farmers to carry less stock because we simply couldnt afford the feed and there was no pasture left.Drought meant not alot of feed around, and what was available tripled in price - simple economics, supply and demand!

Do you think we rock up to the saleyards with a truck load of sheep and say, righto, Ill take nothing less than $100 a head - we wish. They are auctioned off to the highest bidder, so if there are 30,000 sheep in the sale than you would expect a lower price, which is what happened in the drought because noone could feed their sheep.

Ah the comedy continues! Nicky the vegan in proverbial bed with
a butcher :)

Rehctub, I sold lambs in 79 for 25$, so your 89 figures are a rather
distored one of history. The cost price squeeze affecting agriculture
over time is well known.

Have any of you two pair of amateurs ever done a farm budget and
know what the costs are? That gear in the butcher shop would be
worth less then a common seeding rig.

Don't blame me if you are being ripped off on rent. Bunnings
warehouses pay around 100$ a metre to rent the buildings. Why
should farmers pay for your high rents?

What subsidies come to WA? I've never seen a single Dollar in my
hands and neither have any of my friends. That goes mainly to
NSW and Qld. So cancel it, but also cancel payments to the MV
industry, the education industry and every other industry that has
its hand out to Govt. Don't just discriminate against farmers.
Personally to me, it would not make a cent of difference.

150 million $ extra in WA farmers pockets, benefits a huge number
of people, I can assure you. For they spend it on fencing, silos,
fodder, machinery, a whole host of farm improvements. Everyone
benefits.

The real problem for the meat industry is that they have kept what
they paid to farmers so low, that the sheep flock has dropped from
170 million to 77 million. Its the old story, never mind clever
marketing or efficient production, let's just pay farmers less, that
way the figures work. Due to the tyranny of distance, there is
far less competition in WA then in the East, so farmers here
are particularly affected. Live exports at least keep local
meatworks honest on some % of sheep. They can't rob farmers on
all of them.

People like you highlight my point. You are quite happy to buy
20 kg of lamb for 6 $ and sell 1kg for that price, leaving farmers
5% of a lambs value. Greed if ever I saw it.

countryperson, you make a great point - that farmers don't set the price, customers do. For a country that stands so strongly on free markets the desire from some to subsidise local meatworks, at farmers expence by banning live exports, beggars belief. We all want local industry and processing, but if they can't compete on a world level then we either shut up shop and import meat cuts or we get on with the job at the best margin we can. That will invariably mean higher prices for the customer, or they become vegetarian - their choice.

rechtub, Surely you must find it incongruous to accept paying such rent increases but somehow think the farmer is less deserving. Of course you have always been free to vertically integrate your business by buying a farm, so I think it unfair to cry foul if you feel you've missed out on the spoils. As countryperson points out your peers set the price (buy and sell price), and the customer decides to buy or not to buy, as it should be. Meat as a fresh product is a little different to wool and cotton, but the apathy toward buying Australian made, and the lower cost to processors, has shifted nearly all our fibre value adding overseas. To the consumers benefit, though not necessarily Australia's. As a small population we cannot hope to use all domestically, so to demand that everything be processed here would mean that we wouldn't find customers overseas for all our high priced products, stifiling overall export income and primary industry.

Hi Yabby, excellent points as always.

Nicky, you haven't changed a bit ;)
The focus on handouts to farmers gets a bit lame in the face of bank deposit guarantees, and billions in economy "stimulation".
Essentially, as you would be aware most of the subsidy is in interst rates, which by definition goes toward paying the banks, and not 4wd salesmen. If you aren't actually failing to cover your interest payments, you aren't getting the subsidy. Not exactly a desirable position to be in.
After all the drought has been caused by human induced climate change hasn't it, most of which is a result of urban living. It's only fair then that some farmers(20%?) get a hand to produce food at third world prices, in a first world economy - during the worst drought in living memory. .

People like you highlight my point. You are quite happy to buy
20 kg of lamb for 6 $ and sell 1kg for that price, leaving farmers
5% of a lambs value. Greed if ever I saw it.

Sorry, but I never said I paid $6 per lamb, that was what farmers were paid. They were also shooting sheep at the same time if you recall. For the record I was paying about $45, today I pay $110 per lamb.

As for hand outs, I except that not all farmers get hand outs and I should have made that clear. I was generalising and I am sorry for that. But;

I don’t know of any retail business that gets hand outs when stock prices soar due to supply shortages. Bananas was a prime example. Many fruiterers when to the wall, along with transport companies because there were no bananas to carry. Who supported these people? The farmers were compensated, then, once their crops were ready for market pocketed up to $150 per box compared to the $11 they were getting. I wonder how many farmers gave back the hand outs from the millions of extra dollars they pocketed from the very ones who provided the support? The consumers!

Now for the record I don’t hate farmers but why should we support them in tough times while they pocket millions in good times and shaft us when the live export market is a better option at the time.

One for the animal lovers
In September 1995, the South African government banned the importation of live sheep. They said:
"The transportation of meat in live form is archaic and inhumane."

As for interest payments. Please remember many farmers pay interest today due to poor management. They inherited their farms with 0000000$ debt yet today they owe millions. Notice I said MANY FARMERS, not all!

rehctub, you say that SOME farmers receive their farms via inheritance and end up in debt due to poor management,unfortunately most of these farmers not only inheret the land but also the debt on the land. Margins started to decline for farmers in the mid 80s - not just the last 4 years.

I would also argue that the large majority of farmers who end up with family farms are in debt because they have had to buy the farm from the parents,(at market interest rates) in some cases they have had to buy out siblings as well...some are still in partnership with retired parents so dont actually own any land.

If a young farmer is lucky enough to inheret a farm with no debt they still have to stock it, plant it, etc, so of course they are going to borrow against the land to create income.

So, once again your comment is a huge generalisation. For your comments to be true the young farmer getting the inheritance would also have to inheret trucks, utes, machinery, stock, motorbikes, tools, diesel, animal health products, fertiliser, etc etc. which in my experience has never happened - and most of our friends are farmers.