Farmers badly hit- businesses hurt
THE WASHOUT summer is causing havoc for Limerick businesses, and shoppers may be looking at food price hikes as farmers struggle to provide produce.
More than 5,000 beef and dairy farmers in Limerick are having to pay out for feed supplements and they will be looking at even bigger bills when winter closes in, it has been predicted.
But consumers are winning in other areas, with over stocked department stores and garden furniture suppliers having to slash prices to tempt buyers.
Met Éireann says that June was the wettest since records began,
The last five weeks of wet conditions in Ireland and the severe weather front in the United States are affecting the cost of food production, warns Vincent Carton, managing director of Carton Bros and member of the Bord Bia Quality Assurance. He says it is only a matter of time before the consumer sees the impact.
“As a company and an industry we are under severe pressure with the rising cost of wheat and many other cereals as they have a direct impact on the cost of producing chicken,” said Mr Carton.
“We have already absorbed the increases in costs for gas, electricity and others such as diesel, which has led to increased distribution costs. However, these pale to insignificance compared to the increase in the cost of feed. Feed represents just over 50 per cent of the cost of a chicken”.
The County Limerick chairman of the Irish Farmers Association, Eddie Scanlan, said farmers are facing a “very serious situation” which will cost an estimated €160 million nationally.
“About half of farmers haven’t got any silage in. The weather broke at the very worst time, when the silage season should have been coming into full swing. It’s absolutely chaotic. And then without a first cut there’s no aftergrass. What grass there is, is not of a quality that animals can get proper nutrition from, so farmers are bringing their cattle back indoors and feeding them in the middle of July. That’s never done”.
And many beef factories are “taking advantage,” he claimed, offering 10 cents per kilo less this week as farmers struggle to get animals to put on weight.
Meanwhile, the heat has been turned up on department stores desperate to shift summer clothes, with many giving up to 70 per cent off
Caroline Whelan of ‘A Room Outside’ in the East Link Business Park, said that while sales of barbecues haven’t suffered, garden furniture has.
“You don’t have to have sunshine to barbecue but you do to sit outside. We’ve reduced all our our garden sets by up to 25 per cent.
And holidaymakers are taking to the skies, Limerick Travel has confirmed.
“There’s a big increase in last minute bookings,” said Shane O’Donoghue.
“People want sunshine,” he told the Limerick Post
