Livestock Markets?

[dsys]

Hi all,

Had a browse through some of the previous posts but cant find what i'm looking for.

1. Is there a central site for monitoring the price of livestock?

2. If we are selling on some pigs (for example) are we generally restricted to the local middle men or is there a direct route to the abatours - live stock auctions like in Europe? (wishfull thinking).

hopefully somebody will have some decent advice

[Tilapia]

Not from what I know, maybe for fish at the fresh market in Bangkok, but up-country it is like a free market, the prices flow up and down (for pigs, mostly down at this moment).

The price is also different from the provinces, so at times it can be hard to sell your product at the price you want, specially when you have to use a middle man or agent.

If it is pigs you have, then you could open a little shop, and sell fresh meat, many people here sell at least one to two fresh slaughtered pigs per day (wont work if you have 200 ready to sell now) anyway, good luck.

Tilapia.

[fruity]

As Tilapia says, it is pretty much a free market. There are weekly cattle markets in most provinces, but never for pigs. As I have said before, the only way to make money from pigs is to breed your own & rear them.

As an example, yesterday morning, before 6am I sold three pigs to two different people, villagers here who just turned up at the gate unannounced. One for a funeral party, two for monk party, good price 40b-kilo, total of 343 kilos. The locals will buy all you have, although it is hit & miss. Once you are known to have pigs ready for slaugher most of the time, they will come & buy, every week in your average village there are weddings, funerals & young boys going to be monks, all parties requiring a pig or two. Last week had one go lame, so we killed him & sold the pork around the village in ten minuites @ 60 baht kilo minimum 2 kilos per person; which drew us even, there being at least twenty people we couldn't service.

[dsys]

Thanks for the info. Noted through previous posts about the breeding your own, that is the way we are going with the pigs. This will be our first 'lot' to sell and really trying to understand the market and how it works. (Should really have done more research up front but as they say you live and learn).

Having difficulty understanding who the middle men sell to. If they buy 50 pigs form us who do they sell to? Impossible to get this info out the locals, for obvious reasons. Guess it is like everything else in LOS - just wait and see and it will work itself out

Liked the idea about a small shop, that should work well.

Also about the funeral parties/monks/weddings - thats also a good idea.

Anybody know which pig products sell well (in general); Sausages, dried pork etc? Asked the missus but as usual after a three hour conversation with her friends I only get the three word standard NSD (Not sure darling) answer.

[Tilapia]

Thanks for the info. Noted through previous posts about the breeding your own, that is the way we are going with the pigs. This will be our first 'lot' to sell and really trying to understand the market and how it works. (Should really have done more research up front but as they say you live and learn).

Having difficulty understanding who the middle men sell to. If they buy 50 pigs form us who do they sell to? Impossible to get this info out the locals, for obvious reasons. Guess it is like everything else in LOS - just wait and see and it will work itself out

Liked the idea about a small shop, that should work well.

Also about the funeral parties/monks/weddings - thats also a good idea.

Anybody know which pig products sell well (in general); Sausages, dried pork etc? Asked the missus but as usual after a three hour conversation with her friends I only get the three word standard NSD (Not sure darling) answer.

No need to make anything special, just sell it as fresh meat, they can use it all. You can take a trip to the market and check out the prices there.

Tilapia.

[Maizefarmer]

Dysys - to answer your questions:

1) Can livestock pricing be monitored?

Yes it can - prices are collated on a daily basis by the Department of Internal Trade, not interestingly, by the Deparment of Agriculture. With respect to pork, the most recent figures are for first week of June 2007 - Baht 39, 31 - Baht 40,17 (up from last week May Baht 37,83 - 39,21).

2) Can you sell direct to the abatour?

Yes you can - but as you have noticed, you get bullied into going through a middleman (the big problem throughout the Thai fresh produce market which is really a function of the size of the average Thai farm and the better economics of dealing with one buyer/seller as opposed to a dozen small entities. Its a big problem across the industry, irrspective of crop/food type and is a constant irritant to small farmers).

Quick word on the Thai slaughter business: you get 3 types of abatours in Thailand

1) Those that carry internationaly recognised health certificates - from which meat products can be packed for export

2) Those that carry national health certificates - from which meat that you find in the supermarkets and processed foods comes from.

3) Those that carry no certification - from which the meat you find in local village markets comes from.

With respect to abatour types:

1) - the only animals they will slaughter are animals that come from farms that carry a health certificate.

2) - the same applies, but in reality it is not enforced.

3) - well, no certification applies and this is representative of the average small scale Thai farmer whose meat is sold on the local village market.

The first types are operated by the big brand names e.g. Saha and CP Group (amongst others), the second type are provincial independants who sell meat cuts on to independant food processes for inclusion in pre-packed type meals and pre-cooked food, and the 3rd type, is as said, mainly the meat you see hanging daily at the local market.

Thailand pork exports are next to nil - as Thailand does not satisfy international requirements for the control of F&M diesese - except for small amounts in cooked and prepacked fast food type products (the sort of thing you by frozen to cook/warm up in the micro-wave).

Weekly pork prices and be obtained from Department of Internal Trade - get hold of the provincial office for the province you are in to get the most recent price - it will be a live animal price on kilograms.

MF

[rayjen]

what about beef?

[dsys]

Maizefarmer:

Thanks for the info. I guess I was contacting the wrong department to get the info I should have remembered that it would have been too logical to have the information under the agriculture dept. All in all though the Thai officials I have spoken to thus far have been a lot more helpfull than anybody at DEFRA.

The info about the abatours is most valuable and greatly appreciated.

At present fact finding and talking to locals about national health certification process. Right now in our business plan this is not where we can get to immediately but are working towards. Taking over a small holding and truning it into a busines is a lot harder that starting out afresh I am finding. Not all the practices in the UK relate or work over here, not that I expected them to.

I guess being new(ish) on the ground here in Thailand I am finding it hard to accept the "market forces" governing the industry. There appears to be very few co-ops, I would have exected more given the large amounts of small holdings.

Most of the barriers into the market appear to be social rather than economic. The price variations on LWP that we have been quoted have ranged from poor to histerical. I guess though all this will improve once I get a feel or the markets and the setup.

your advice has certainly put me in the direction I was trying to go.

[Maizefarmer]

Dsys

Keep this mind - setting yourself up just so that you can get a health certificate can be a false economy. I have one for beef - in hindsight, if I was setting up the farm now, I wouldn;t bother quite frankly.

First it's a scale of economies thing: there is little to no benefit unless you are intending to sustain production levels that can be be contracted for i.e. you are going to be able to offer an abbatoir x amount of kg's per what every time frame is agreed upon. They in turn will rely on you to adhere to that - leting them down could result in them then having to let down the food processor that relies on them, which in turn lets the processed food wholesaler down, which in turn lets the retailer down.

Ask yourself really is it worth it - and if your market is the fresh local market the answer is no.

The upside is of course that you know in advance that your product is sold - and that enables you to forecast cashflow and turnover - so it's not all negative.

The second consideration, is the amount of work it adds: livestock feed has to be traceable to origin. Thats an obvious I think, but yu are tied into a monitoring system that has the authority to bring you to a standstill i.e. one sick animal could result in all animals having to be treated - and all animals under treatment (e.g.anti - biotics) means no sales. Whereas, not been tied into the system gives you the freedom to isolate that animal, can carry on with the rest of the animals as if nothing is wrong.

There are a whole host of conditions to be met (and it all costs money)and to be adhered to.

In summary - it really is non-viable unless you are running things on a large scale - for pigs, I'd guess that would be around the 1 000 head plus mark, not much less.

For cattle (beef) - 500 plus head, and like I said, it's not the route I'd follow now if I was to repeat all this work, unless I was up around the 1 000 head mark - and I'm no-where near that.

Rayjen

Beef? - 2 types: those that have a export health certificate, and those that don't but are none-the-less subject to minuim standards.

I don't off hand know what the standards are for the latter, except that it's largely about welfare of the animals while at the slaughter house.

I think it a fair comment that throughout the slaughter buisness in Thailand, irrespective of whether it's a chicken, turkey, duck, cow, goose, goat or whatever ..... animal welfare standards are poorly enforced. There are some sluaghter houses where, out of consince welfare standards are up held, but they are very much in the minority. I could share some horror stories on this forum regards what I have seen in certified Thai slaughter houses (sledgehammer used to stun cattle because the stun gun broke down yesterday - or some other pathetic excuse!!). The exception been the export houses - and only because most have overseas buyers reps present throughout the process.

If it has to be slaughtered, then we pass the word round for a day or so. Thailand does export significant quantities of both fresh and frozen beef products (mainly to the Mid-East countries and Arabian Penninsula)