One day at a Time

[grassfarmer]

I am, and we will be running an active campaign in this area to get everyone out to vote - but I imagine it will be a tough sell just like getting people to the BIG-C rally in our area was. Plenty of complaining in private but few willing to get off their backsides and help themselves when push comes to shove.

[cakadu]

Grassfarmer, I wish you well in trying to get people out to these meetings. It certainly is a head scratcher when it comes to understanding why people are quick to point out what's wrong, but not so quick to jump in and help with solutions.

The one thing I will say is that at least the cattle crisis has been kept on the front pages and in the fore of a lot of people's minds.

Here are some interesting facts with respect to the sheep industry. This truncated article comes from the Food Safety Net. The Canadian Sheep Federation announced net cash receipts had dropped 42 per cent for its producers, for the first quarter of 2004.
That's more than any other livestock group. Even cattle sales, which are usually making the front pages in regards to BSE, are down less, at a still- devastating 36 per cent. Like cattle farmers, sheep producers' portion of their annual production normally exported to the U.S. ($10 million in 2003, prior to the May BSE discovery) has been cut off. The prior year, 98 per cent of the $18.6 million earned from sheep exports was from sales to the U.S. Exclusion from the U.S. market has resulted in lambs normally exported there flooding the Canadian market instead, driving prices down. And it gets worse, says the federation. The unfortunate low-price, high- inventory situation is compounded by inadequate slaughter capacity in Canada for lamb. So even if farmers want to market their lamb domestically, they have limited places to get it processed.
Provincial marketing agencies have increased their efforts, to try to clear the backlog of lambs. But then along comes that most dreaded commodity to Canadian lamb producers -- imported New Zealand lamb -- which has long competed for their markets (some say unfairly), and still does so. Randy Eros, chair of the federation, calls the situation "quite desperate." He says all sheep producers are feeling the impact of the BSE crisis, and many believe that the industry has been overlooked. This is really a tough situation for the sheep industry. Sales were picking up before the BSE crisis hit, with producers getting more heavily into sheep production, to meet what was a growing demand both for domestic consumption, and export. Now, what?
___

To my knowledge, there is only one federal lamb processing facility in Alberta and it may even be Western Canada. Couple that with the largest feedlot in Saskatchewan just yesterday announcing that it will not be accepting any more lambs and that the feedlot will remain closed until the border opens and you have a huge crash waiting to happen in the lamb industry. Lamb producers pay checkoff just as beef producers do and it is captured when buying the mandatory i.d. tags. The lamb that is being sold into the Canadian market is from a far bigger carcass than what Canadians like because the Americans prefer a much heavier carcass than we do.

The sheep industry is now where near as big as the cattle industry, yet for lamb producers, it does look grim. We ourselves have managed to stay outside of the mainstream and direct market. Slaughter availability is now our biggest challenge among others.

Maybe we need to take a few notes from the cattle industry and start to change who is running the sheep industry. This should never have become an issue for the sheep sector and it would appear as though both the support and the leadership have been somewhat lacking. Maybe more has happened than what the average sheep producer has heard about, but I'm just guessing there.

[grassfarmer]

Cakadu, I'm sorry the sheep producers here are having a tough time. We always ran sheep/cattle on a 50/50 basis in terms of business scale in Scotland and they are a very profitable animal - in fact my Dad brought us up on the theory they were the only inherantly profitable farm animal better than dairy cows, pigs or beef largely because they were a low input animal.
It has struck me since coming to Canada that this is very much not sheep country, the long winter feeding period, possible droughts and predator problems all count against you as well as a total lack of sheep infrastructure. It looks to me like supplying a small local market might be the best option for sheep here. Why would you want sheep "feedlots" and then export the produce? It is a surely a case of being unable to compete with southern hemisphere countries with year round grass. Even in Scotland many sheep on the hills were carried through the winter without supplemental feed.
I don't want to discourage sheep producers but I think they will have a tough future trying to compete on the world stage in sheep exporting.

[cakadu]

It is basically a viscious circle when it comes to sheep production. We cannot get tarrifs on imports until such time as it can be shown that we can supply the domestic market. The domestic market goes and buys the cheap imports just because they are cheap.

You are quite right, grassfarmer, in that there has been no real infrastructure to deal with sheep in this country. We can't even rely on the wool end of things because the breeds that we use are not well known for their wool and there is an inverse relationship between wool production and meat production. (Bear in mind that here on our farm we raise a hair sheep, so wool and shearing are not a part of our management concerns.)

There has been some acknowledgement of the need for better infrastructure and marketing of domestic product and some groups are trying value chains and such in selling their products. Most of the schemes that I have heard of involve marketing to the higher end restaurants and they basically want the rack (biggest seller) or chops, with some wanting legs for a different type of roast on a buffet. If all one sells is those pieces of the lamb, there is still an awful lot left over - in a relative sense - that needs to be value-added and/or sold.

Where some of the money has been made in exports - up until May 20, 2003 - was in exporting germ plasm i.e. the semen or embryos of a few particular breeds.

It certainly is a steep hill we have to get up and direct marketing is one way to do it. Many Canadians do not eat lamb - one too many stories about grandad eating mutton in the war - so I don't know what it will take to increase lamb consumption in this country, much less increase the consumption of domestic lamb.

We need to sell it on much more than price because we cannot compete with the lamb that comes in offshore on a price basis.

I fear that we will see some of the bigger players in the sheep industry going out of the sheep business altogether. I don't know what that will do to the industry as a whole, nor to trying to make it more of a viable industry here in Canada.

[pandiana]

I agree, cakadu. We definately need to improve our market for lamb. I though Canada West was doing a great job and was really disappointed to see them give up. I observed that the price of lamb has dropped considerably recently as it was featured in our local COOP for something like $15.49/kg for shoulder roasts (chicken breasts were about $17.00 I think). This is excellent meat and one sought after by the restaurant trade.

I am very concerned about your statement that feeders are not taking any more lamb. We too are finding difficultly in getting lamb processed. We love lamb but we can't eat it all so need gov't inspected meat processors in order to sell to our customers who are waiting. Lambs can gain quite a lot faster when they are approaching market weight and you are waiting for a hook it would seem.

[cowman]

When I was young and attending Olds College there was a teacher there who was a real advocate for the sheep business. He was a big part of the push to build Lambco(later Canada West). Anyway he had it figured out that the sheep business was in a position to expand and become a major player in the meat business. I clearly remember him saying that the Canadian government needed to step in at that time and protect and support a fledgling industry if they hoped to succeed!
Olds ran a fairly extensive sheep program at that time and they put a good number of the lambs through their own slaughter house. I believe the "in Demand" cuts were sold to the Federated co-ops or something? Anyway what was left over went to the cafeteria to be made into lamb stew. They sold it cheap and it was very tasty!
I had never ate lamb in my life until I went there(my Dad was one of those old army boys who never wanted to taste mutton again!) and I've never lost my taste for it! Unfortunately very few restaurants serve it regularily so the opportunity to eat it are few and far between. I'm not much of a cook so I don't buy it at Safeway.
Saw a cute bumper sticker several years ago..."Eat Alberta lamb....50,000 coyotes can't be wrong"!

[cakadu]

The support for the sheep farmer has never really been there. I recall many years ago when asking the federal government about tarrifs against lamb (and goat meat too). The response was something to the effect of not putting tarrifs in place until such time as the industry could show that they were able to fill the domestic demand themselves.

With the statistics being given in terms of exported lamb, I guess we aren't really managing to take over the domestic supply first.

Another nail in the coffin came when there was the problem with scrapie down east and all of a sudden there were problems with getting anything over a year processed - no place to send the offal. Now we see the same thing all over again, we're being charged to get rid of the offal, as all the other species are too.

Changing peoples tastes and educating them on how to properly cook lamb (or any other new product for that matter) is very costly - in fact it is one of the most expensive things you can attempt to do. Personally, I think once people are served lamb that is cooked properly they change their minds about it.

One other thing that really hurts sales is if you try to sell it and don't eat it yourself - big problems. I don't know of too many lamb producers that don't eat their own products, but when goats were all the rage a few years ago, there were many that were raising them that would not eat them. Good selling tool, don't you think?

I'm not exactly sure what the answer is - cohesion amongst producers would likely go a long way. What we may have to do is get more grassroots people sitting on the various sheep boards, just as you are attempting to do with the cattle boards. There may be some very valuable lessons and learnings coming in the next few months.

[grassfarmer]

I must admit to that failing too Cakadu, we used to get about 800 lambs a year killed, largely shipped to France and I think i've tasted lamb twice in my life. Just can't stand the stuff - like venison it's not worth eating to me!!
We had huge problems selling lamb in the UK as we faced a demographic time bomb with no-one under 50 eating lamb. To be fair a few trendy lamb adverts on TV in recent years got a lot of new young urban consumers interested. It was a case of using sex to sell lamb - and sex always sells!

[cswilson]

Using sex to sell sheep somehow a vision of rubber boots came to mind lol.