An Interesting Slant On Things
Spot feed demand in the UK has held up remarkably well across the summer months, with many compounders reporting brisk sales throughout July and August.
Why should that be I wonder, in the face of rapidly escalating prices? Are the livestock boys coining it in so rapidly that they can easily afford a hike in the feed bill?
I mean, I know that milk prices have gone up, but the rise has hardly been stratospheric. More like a quarter pence/litre here and there.
Meanwhile we all know that wheat, rapemeal etc are up in huge leaps and bounds not fractions.
So what's going on then?
Your average paranoid British compounder has been phasing these price rises in as gently as possible, absorbing a lot of the extra himself from what I can gather. A fiver on the first of August, another five or ten on the fist of September followed by a reality check fifteen or twenty on the first of October still to come.
Meanwhile every rep in the land has been encouraging his farmers to get their orders in before these price rises kick-in. The upshot of all that being it could go eerily quite come October-time as everyone has already had ample opportunity to double or treble order prior to that.
Any compounder restricting farmers to their regular quantities might simply find his guy booking that and also apparently "defecting" to the opposition to double up his tonnage that way.
How many reps will be saying "I've been trying to get in with this guy for ages and now I've clinched it" in October, only to find that they are simply being used as a urinating post when November's order fails to materialise I wonder?
Just a theory.
Why should that be I wonder, in the face of rapidly escalating prices? Are the livestock boys coining it in so rapidly that they can easily afford a hike in the feed bill?
I mean, I know that milk prices have gone up, but the rise has hardly been stratospheric. More like a quarter pence/litre here and there.
Meanwhile we all know that wheat, rapemeal etc are up in huge leaps and bounds not fractions.
So what's going on then?
Your average paranoid British compounder has been phasing these price rises in as gently as possible, absorbing a lot of the extra himself from what I can gather. A fiver on the first of August, another five or ten on the fist of September followed by a reality check fifteen or twenty on the first of October still to come.
Meanwhile every rep in the land has been encouraging his farmers to get their orders in before these price rises kick-in. The upshot of all that being it could go eerily quite come October-time as everyone has already had ample opportunity to double or treble order prior to that.
Any compounder restricting farmers to their regular quantities might simply find his guy booking that and also apparently "defecting" to the opposition to double up his tonnage that way.
How many reps will be saying "I've been trying to get in with this guy for ages and now I've clinched it" in October, only to find that they are simply being used as a urinating post when November's order fails to materialise I wonder?
Just a theory.