07 10 07

Hill farming economics, 2007: Scottish Government subsidy per lamb slaughtered & incinerated: £15. [“ a welfare disposal scheme to slaughter and render up to 250,000 light lambs that would normally be exported, but which are stuck on Scottish farms and now in an unmarketable condition because of the export ban and livestock movement restrictions”]. Abattoir prices in Dingwall: (200 mile round trip from Ardnamurchan, includes ferry) for slaughter, £17 per lamb. Slaughtered, butchered & dressed, total per lamb, £30. (Cost to farmer). No local buyers for lamb (& certainly not mutton, despite aristocratic & chef noises off). Wethers at market: £2 - £3. Wool: no market value. Cost of lamb chops in supermarket: £3.67 per kilo. Cost of grassland, per acre, per lamb, unknown. Cost of supplementary feeding, variable, but expensive. From The Herald (October 6 2007): “The Northern Ireland Red Meat Industry Task Force, established to develop a five-to-10-year strategy for the beef & sheepmeat industry has concluded that suckler-origin beef and hill sheep have no future.” “The report also concluded that it is not possible to create an economically viable production model for an efficient producer of hill sheep unless the farmgate price increases substantially to approximately £2.80 per kilo. Such conclusions are just as relevant to Scottish producers and will set alarm bells ringing in an industry already in crisis from the foot-and-mouth and blue tongue outbreaks.”

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.