Technical improvements help sheep producers

Provisional headline sheep figures from the 2009 EBLEX Business Pointers report, ahead of the full publication in October, reveal top third lowland sheep producers are investing £1.48 per kg (liveweight), LFA sheep flock top third costs of production stand at £1.66 per kg and costs are £1.30 per kg for the top third of store lamb finishers.

EBLEX chairman John Cross said: “These figures point to good news for sheep enterprises. Producers are responding to the challenges in the industry and improving their technical performance against a difficult economic background. The top third are showing significant improvement while those at the average level are also displaying encouraging signs of improvement in physical performance.”

The EBLEX figures come against a background of spiked costs from March 2008 to March 2009 when the data was captured, for outgoings like spend on fertilisers, animal feed and energy prices.
This year for the first time EBLEX added it is producing the Business Pointers statistics as ‘cost per kilo’ figures to make them as relevant as possible to producers. The provisional headline sheep figures follow on from the equivalent beef statistics that were released last week (15 September).

“We will now analyse the figures fully to see in which areas producers need most help and so tailor our Better Returns Programme accordingly,” added Cross.

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