The chief executive officer (CEO) of the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) has said that he doesn’t agree with farmers blindly selecting animals based on their star rating.
Sean Coughlan was speaking to Agriland on the latest episode of the AgriFocus podcast where he detailed the recent changes to the Euro-Star beef breeding index.
The index is designed to help beef farmers select more profitable breeding animals. Euro-Star Indexes quantify the genetic component of an animal’s performance across all traits of importance for Irish suckler farmers.
The Euro-Star Index has two overall indexes – the Replacement Index and the Terminal Index. This is to facilitate the use of Euro-Star Indexes across different farming systems.
Some farmers may breed their own replacements, in which case the Replacement Index is most relevant. Other farmers may sell all of their suckler progeny as weanlings or take them through to slaughter, in which case the Terminal Index is most relevant.
Coughlan explained that the last major update of the index in terms of economic value, which has proven controversial with some farmers in the suckler sector, was carried out almost eight years ago.
“Dr. Paul Crossan from Teagasc in Grange has done all of the work on this,” Coughlan told the podcast.
“What we were seeing from 2015 is that inflation was running very little. The costs of inputs and the output prices were staying very very constant.
“Then since 2020, what we’ve seen is a dramatic increase… beef prices improved thankfully, but unfortunately the input costs have increased dramatically. So that is what has triggered the reasonably significant change.
The underlying evaluations actually haven’t changed that much. What is driving the major change in this scenario is the economics. It’s the values coming from the Teagasc economic model,” the ICBF chief explained.
“Some farmers will have a little bit of work to do, but the vast majority of farmers are going to be absolutely fine and the effect is not going to be, perhaps, as significant as some are making it out to be.”
You can listen to the full interview on the AgriFocus podcast by clicking here.