Important factors to understand before marketing livestock

Many communal farmers are not aware of prevailing market dynamics and livestock pricing structures, and this can cost them dearly when selling their animals

- Shane Brody

Speculators often purchase livestock at prices considerably lower Saat if considering how many thousands of livestock units are sold within the vast communal farming areas of South Africa annually, income loss can amount to vast sums of money.

Just consider that the 10 former homeland regions are approximately 16 million hectares in extent, and these areas contain hundreds of thousands of small-scale livestock farmers who collectively own a meaningful percentage of the overall livestock in South Africa. However, due to various capacity and logistics challenges, these producers are not well represented in terms of supplying slaughter animals to the formal red meat markets. This, I hope, is something that the Department of Agriculture will address going forward.

Like many farmers, I receive weekly livestock prices via SMS. These prevailing market prices are disseminated by red meat commodity groups and indicate what a farmer can expect to be paid for various classes of cattle, sheep and pigs.