At the market: Sheep quota trade? Baa!

Sir Ross has told the press that he is happy to leave the company after ten years at the top, but there will be some, amongst which I am numbered, that are equally happy to see him go.

Under his management, in the name of rationalisation he expanded, by purchasing regional abattoirs such as the Hargreaves plants at Middlesbrough and Spalding.

Having acquired over 50pc of killing capacity in the country, Malton Foods proceeded then to concentrate its efforts on imported pork and shut down the slaughter houses which were the very life blood of those pig producers.

Sir Ross is one of those imported top business men who, for some unknown reason, manage to acquire some of the best posts in British industry and very often do it no good whatsoever.

They have no vested interest in this country and my final comment is that Sir Ross is headed back to his native Australia, handsomely paid for the damage he has done to us.

* Please note that the above six paragraphs are the departing words of this column's regular author. For the remainer, it is the turn of Charlie Breese.

To carry on his tale a little further, it does appear that the struggling company, which is now up for sale, is not being inundated with offers with its asking price set at £50m.

With profits down 40pc in 1999-2000 and the latest figures showing a £5.4m loss for the six months to November 2000, it isn't looking like one of the soundest investments.

Uniq, formerly Unigate, is dismissing the sale rumours as "more speculation", claiming it is merely looking for an industry-wide rationalisation which Malton would be part of.

The firm claims that, having sold its cheese and milk concerns to Dairy Crest, it is planning to concentrate on its core processed food operation. Bearing in mind that its share of the UK kill is now as low as 10-15pc, down 25pc from three years ago, I would say they have a lot of concentrating to do!

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Greatly relieved that the headache of the sheep quota trading period has expired for another year, I find myself sitting back and reflecting on what a contrast it was to the Suckler Cow trading period.

Trade for the latter was absolutely exorbitant and, right at the death, we were selling lowland for £235/unit and leased out the same at around £90/unit.

The basic income for a unit is set for this year at about £102 per animal, which should be topped up to about £112 per animal by the Beef National Envelope.

In comparison, Sheep Annual Premium is forecast at about £10-£11 per ewe which, give or take a penny, is roughly 10pc of that of the suckler cows.

Following the logic of the cows, we might therefore think that, this year, GB Lowland sheep quota should have been 10pc of the value of the cows, namely £23 per unit to buy and about £9 to lease.

If only, I hear all you vendors and lessors sigh!

At the end of trading, if you got £3.50/unit for a purchase, you were doing well, and you did even better if you got a bid to get it leased.

In my hunting all over the country to dispose of what was on my books, I talked to some fairly tired and desperate quota brokers who, in the Borders and up into Scotland, with only a week of trading to go, had tens of thousands of units still to lease and sell.

At the end, they were leasing the quota to neighbours who then didn't claim it just so it was not lost.

I had a long chat with Richard Machin last week in this regard, and he is of the strong opinion that there simply are not the breeding sheep there, which in turn is going to materially affect the numbers of lambs available from our shores this year and next.

Surely this is going to distort the prices of our own lambs and raise the number of imports dramatically, which is hardly an ideal situation in our current climate.

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With the spring approaching, many land owners who let land will be considering the options available to them with regards to letting their land on a short-term farm business tenancy or whether a longer term tenancy maybe an option to look at.

For those of you who are not aware, the 1995 Agricultural Tenancies Act superseded the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986. The new act offers the landowner freedom of contract, enabling land to be let for a term of years without the tenant obtaining security of tenure, as with the Agricultural Holding Act 1986. The thought behind this new act is that more land will become available to rent on the open market, offering more opportunities to new farming entrants.

Both the Tenant Farmer's Association and the National Farmers' Union believe that Farm Business Tenancies have not met the above expectations.

Land let on Farm Business Tenancies appears to have been let to existing farmers wanting to spread their fixed costs at high rents and there would appear to be very few opportunities, certainly in this area, of farm units becoming available to rent.

MAFF representatives are undertaking a full review of the 1995 Act and this should be completed by the end of this year. There is talk that there may be new tax incentives offered to land owners wishing to let land on a longer term.

All I would say is that we certainly do not want to go down the road of offering security of tenure to the tenant again as, in these difficult times, a Farm Business Tenancy does give the farmer/landowner another option to yielding income from the land.

We do, however, need to address the situation with regards to new entrants into farming as, currently, the average age of our farmers is increasing with each passing year.

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There was a bustle in the market on Tuesday, and 283 head of cattle was a good turnout.

John Cundall was in control of the 97 young bulls, which were a steadier trade, with only the really strong Continentals making it over 100p per kilo.

Top price of the day, of 114p per kilo, was held jointly by Richard and Andrew Wilkinson, with Roland Mason on top in the heavyweight section.

Michael Harrison disposed of the 196 clean cattle, which were slightly harder to place than recent weeks, but Geroge Marwood still managed to climb up to 128p per kilo for a heavy heifer.

Alice and Les Thompson were in the limelight in the bullock sector, with their medium weight which made 122p/kilo.

Just before we head into the sheep shed, I should mention that our first bulls landed in the market at one minute past nine, at which point we had only 37 clean cattle in. The market is open from 7am, and we would greatly appreciate stock coming in earlier rather than later because of the extensive checks we have to make on all the paperwork, FABBL registrations and such like.

Philip was on song in the sheep department and kept trade up to average a respectable 114p per kilo for the 1,100 hoggs on offer. The top pen of the day came from Geoff Gray, which made £55 per head.

The ewe department was the busiest it has been for some time and the 727 forward averaged a respectable £33 per head.

There were just over 250 clean pigs in Malton on Monday and Tuesday, with averages still hovering just above 70p/kg. Stephen Till topped the market in the porker department, with a pen of gilts making 78p/kg. It was also good to see Daniel Johnson back and topping the market in the cutter weight section, making 80p/kg.

Cull sows seemed to have turned the corner, and there has been a 5p/kg uplift since last week. There was a good show of 17 sows on offer, averaging over 39p/kg.

Updated: 09:32 Thursday, February 08, 2001