Baixo Alentejo breeders without cattle feed get rid of animals

Without pasture for livestock due to drought, and with fodder and straw at high prices, pastoralists in Baixo Alentejo dispose of animals at auctions or slaughterhouses.

ACOS – Associação de Agricultores do Sul in Beja organizes a cattle auction every month in the city’s fairs and exhibitions park, and this month there were 295 animals registered from about 30 breeders in the region.

The day before, the cattle were unloaded, weighed and grouped into lots, and on the day of the auction, many buyers, with a paper with a description of the lot in their hands, use the period before the sale to inspect the animals. .

Manuel Machado Godinho has a small farm in the neighboring municipality of Serpa where he has about 60 cattle and told Lusa that he traveled to Beja to supervise the sale of 21 young animals he is putting up for auction.

“I have already had to cut 10 adult animals on the farm” due to the difficulties caused by the drought, and now “holding on as best I can and see if I can keep” the herd highlights this. Producer Alentejo.

In anticipation of the auction, Manuel Machado Godinho warns that the lack of rain in the region has limited pasture growth and that prices for a bale of hay could reach 25 to 30 cents per kilo.

“A bale of hay weighing 450 kg can cost 130 euros and is enough for about 25 animals a day,” he emphasizes, adding that his stock, between last year’s straw and purchased silage, is only enough to feed the animals. four months.

Sitting next to each other and facing the ring where cattle are sold, Leonel Cantinho and José Rodriguez, both with farms in the municipality of Beja and animals in auctions, analyze the livestock sector and fear the worst.

“There are no pastures here, and straw, besides being expensive, is hard to come by,” laments Leonel Cantinho, for whom the sector is “not in the best light,” as livestock farmers spend a lot of money a day on food and animal prices. rise, fall.

José Rodriguez is even more pessimistic and predicts the end of extensive livestock farming: “The trend will end if there is no help from the European Community or the Portuguese government,” he says.

“Thousands of cattle are being slaughtered, and many more will be slaughtered because there are no conditions for keeping animals with a lack of feed,” he warns.

This auction, according to Miguel Madeira, vice president of ACOS and in charge of the association’s animal health department, had “greater demand”, primarily for the sale of adult animals due to the lack of cattle feed.

“If we had more space, we would have more adult animals because the demand was high. But space is limited and we can’t accommodate everyone,” he says, pointing out that some livestock “were on the waiting list and will be up for the next auction.” “.

The person in charge, who helps lead the animals through the sleeves from the parks to the ring during the auction, says Lusa that it has already been seen that “manufacturers are reducing their numbers to accommodate their capabilities.”

Arthur Ferreira, one of the buyers who attended the auction, admits that this year “producers are selling more animals than in previous years”, and some even want to get rid of “the whole herd” because they know that “they will not have food”.

But the price of animals “has not come down because they are in short supply and there is business abroad. [do país] that keep prices from falling,” he notes.

According to Carmen Lampreia, one of the company’s managers, the trend for breeders to sell more animals is also seen in Matadouro do Litoral Alentejano, in Odemira, also in the Beja area.

“We already have some demand,” he emphasizes, predicting that from June next year the slaughterhouse “will have a lot of slaughter, namely cattle and sheep.”

Noting that this also happened last summer, Carmen Lampreya cites as an example the slaughtering and loading of at least three trucks for a Portuguese client scheduled for next week.