Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) National Sheep Committee chair, Adrian Gallagher, has shared his views on an outlook for the sheep sector in 2024.
Gallagher, a farmer from Falcarragh, Co. Donegal, was the vice-chair of the IFA sheep committee throughout the year, but has been in the position of chair since November.
Gallagher told Agriland his “big concern for 2024 is bluetongue. My fear is Ireland gets a case of bluetongue, we need to try and avoid that,” he stressed.
The IFA sheep chair said that if cases in mainland Europe increase, should Ireland maintain a bluetongue free status, it will provide an opportunity to grow exports.
“If it does take off in Europe and we can keep clean, then we can fill that market.
“We need to do everything in our power to ensure bluetongue doesn’t come into Ireland, or Northern Ireland, because we are too close,” Gallagher said.
Sheep trade
Reflecting on the sheep trade in 2023, Gallagher said it was “very bad year for lamb finishers”.
Anyone “who finished lambs on concentrates” from January to the beginning of March, according to Gallagher, “would’ve had significant losses”.
Due to the high prices of meal, Gallagher said “it didn’t make economic sense to finish lambs” during this period.
In March and April, Ramadan and Easter “helped the trade” for stores, which was quickly joined by the return of spring lamb to the market, which Gallagher said was a good trade which stayed through from April to June.
“Any farmer that lambed in January and February and got their lambs away from May to July would have more than broke even.”
It was an unusual year in the sheep trade, as Gallagher said there was not “the same volume of spring lamb until then”.
This, the IFA sheep chair said, caused the factories to continue to kill hoggets and pay farmers for them “right up until the end of June” which is something Gallagher said he had not seen before.
“This has been materialising over the last couple of years where we’re getting a lot less early lambers, and factories are starting to pay for hoggets longer,” he added.
Store lamb trade
Changes to lieback during the summer caused “an enormous impact on the store lamb trade”, as tillage farmers that were to put catch crops in for lambs, “hesitated” according to Gallagher.
By the time changes were implemented, Gallagher acknowledged that while many tillage farmers around the south of the county could plant these catch crops, for those in the north-west in particular, it was getting “late” to put in the crop.
This issue, combined with a wet September, made farmers unsure if they would buy store lambs.
This had a knock-on effect for farmers that lambed in April that would be selling in August that “wouldn’t have made money” with their supply of stores.
Summing up the performance of this year’s sheep in the trade, the IFA sheep chair said “lamb finishers at the start of the year…made big losses”.
The early lamb producers were “breaking even and paying for themselves” but this was followed by the late season lambs, or store lambs, which “lost money”.
Gallagher said the poor killouts of the light lambs in the factories means the overall tonnage of lamb “won’t be there this year”.
Exports
The live exports of lambs in 2023 was aided by the removal of the residency period, which “helped” the live export trade in July and August, according to the IFA sheep chair.
Gallagher can see the live export market for Irish lambs being “better” in 2024.
He referred to the current “shortage of lamb in Europe,” for which there was a small boost seen in October for the live exports of Irish lamb which quickly “dried up”.
Working hard to open the US market for sheepmeat, Gallagher said an audit must be done before the market opens, which he hopes will take place soon.