The Teagasc Grange beef open day provided a huge opportunity to engage with the science and research that impacts beef farms across the country. The message from the start was that production efficiency is important, but sustainability must be front and centre right now, not at some vague point in the future.

Beef Enterprise leader Paul Crosson was very clear – Irish beef is starting from a good position in terms of the environmental story.

The carbon dioxide equivalent global average for a kilo of beef is 47kg, compared to 18kg for Irish beef. Crosson sees opportunities to move it even lower, to 15kg, with younger age at finishing in particular.

He said Ireland ranks the best in terms of high quality forage used for meat (food) production.

According to Crosson, the key message on farm profitability is that 40% of receipts on the average beef farm are now from scheme payments, with the balance coming from cattle sales.

The focus on the dairy beef side of the house at Grange was significant.

The evidence and visual demonstration on the value of CBV (commercial beef value) was clear. High CBV suck dairy calves that are four months old already had a 30kg difference in liveweight.

While it is hard to see the actual or visual difference in the CBV when calves are four weeks old, at four months old the visual and actual difference is beginning to really materialise.

This culminates in high CBV animals leaving more profit for the farmer. The Dairy Beef 500 numbers show gross margins of over €1,300/ha are possible with high CBV dairy beef animals.

Net margin

This drops to €540/ha net margin when you take out the fixed costs for farms stocked at 2.3 LU/ha. That’s €230/livestock unit. What’s critical to achieve this is better genetics, better animal health and high-stocked, good quality grassland management.

The Teagasc booklet goes into detail on the financial targets for profitability of the dairy beef systems relative to suckler systems.

According to the Teagasc researchers, the net margin is between €250 to €300 per livestock unit for the suckler operations compared to €500 per livestock unit for the dairy beef systems.

This shows the targets for 2023 dairy beef farms are at about 50% of where they need to be relative to the Teagasc target. We can only presume this is a mixture of poor performance, higher costs of nitrogen and higher feed costs in 2023 relative to the Teagasc target assumptions.

So while the reality is that dairy beef can be more profitable for many, it is difficult to achieve as the labour resource, quality grass and attention to detail that is paramount in dairy beef systems are not there.

The other limiting factor coming down the line for the dairy beef operations is the potential loss of the derogation.

These systems are a function of high stocking rate, good management and good performance. Again, this underlines the importance of the nitrate derogation to these dairy beef systems, not just the dairy farms.

The advisors on the dairy beef stands are saying that it can work, but it is costly and you need everything spot on for it to be successful.

Key to the start of dairy beef is knowing the CBV, and we know that there wasn’t good enough uptake or display of CBV figures in the mart rings in 2024.

There is more room for inefficiency or soil type differences in the suckler enterprise.

For the typical suckler farm with limited farm infrastructure, natural grasslands and working off farm is much closer to the reality.

In this respect, the ICBF researchers in Grange highlighted the importance of breeding, and the five star suckler cows coming in at €150 in the replacement index are leaving a total carcase revenue in excess of €317 per cow. This means better genetics is paying off handsomely.

The crowds to the open day started arriving early. Were there any silver bullets? No, but lots of little nuggets. Was there any one solution to the on farm profitability challenge?

No, and it is clear support schemes are crucial to the future of the sector.