End of an Era.

Three Years ago This project of mine began as a foray into the wilderness. It started as an idea, a crooked idea, with many shenanigans and under table talk about how to milk the project for its money.

Crooks are all the same. They talk too much. Talk is not cheap its free.

We have suffered a lot of pain to get where we are. My poor workers were almost all spent. Some could not sleep at night, and watched the sun rise to begin yet another day of back breaking intensive work. Some of them went gaga. Some just got fed up and left. As for me, I was always the same. I demand all or else, or else this roof will fall down and I will be buried under it.

Next years plans have already advanced. Its milk in 2014 not meat anymore.

With the end of thats, also sees an end of the livestock kept for breeding purposes. These animals were part of the original herd. Animals come and go, but the herd stayed, now this herd has gone for good. The Big Red Bull has already gone, to the slaughter in 2012. It was replaced, with the brown spotted bull in the last row of pictures. Spotty is huge, but its still a young~ish bull. That herd now belongs to somebody else now, having shipped out yesterday to its new owners.

Also gone are the customers for the meat business, with milk, the customers will be different, willing to pay upfront, and the sales will be daily not once a year. In 2014, there will be no peak season, but rather the onus is on how much preparation you've made and what you can sustain.

Still, I get the vapours just thinking of some of these wastes of space. It goes something like this:

In the meat business, the people I met always fell into one of 3 categories.

~Good.
~Bad.
~Ugly.

In fact almost 95% of all the people I met fell in the last 2 categories, but for those who are in the top 5%, their input and contributions are priceless. They are few are far between, they come to you not looking for something, but ask if there is something that you need. They have laid a path for you to walk on, and are there in the beginning, and also at the end. These people, money cannot buy, no matter what the price.

These people will be around in 2014, to help as they always have.

The last words about this are simply that time moves on and things have to change. Things are now changing, hopefully for the better of course.

Oh wait... I Forgot.....

I completely forgot to mention this Years performance on the market. 

Well if you want to know, we did outstandingly well despite all of the setbacks. There were many problems, but the trick to overcoming the mess that it was in January was simple, find out what was going well and stick to it.

Here is a list of stumbling blocks:

~High cattle prices

~Diminishing Feeder cattle supply (of the appropriate breed).

~Worker shortages

~Annual drought

~Grass shortages 

~High feed Prices

~Increasing utility/fuel prices

~Fixed ceiling prices or Maximum seasonal prices

~Limited stocks and unlimited demand for that same stock.

~Workers dissatisfaction.

and lastly

~Increasing levels of manpower fatigue and exhaustion.

Sounds bad doesm't it.

Well not really, we did what we could of course.

There was a niche and we filled it. We nearly died in the process, but overall it was a lot of fun.

Next year we will move to dairy. As mentioned in my previous post, were getting out, because supply is drying up and prices are going through the roof. 

Change of business.

Hi Evertbody,

Miss me already?

Anyways, I have decided that we will be shifting our focus next year to Dairy instead of Meat. There is a lot of Work to do now and we will be going ahead as soon as we the year is out.

See you Next Year.

How To Fell a Coconut Tree

Coconut trees are a resilient and hardy type of plant that can resist severe weather, drought and even the occasional abuse from us humans. We here in fact, view them as an utter nuisance, because apart from the occasional fruit which is nice to drink and has medicinal properties, the plant has a habit of dropping its waste on peoples heads, or more precisely on my poor roof sheeting. Look at all that damage from just one of them!

Enough is enough, and now its time for Mr.Tree to say Goodbye.

In fact so resilient are the trees that the roots make them very strong. If I were to remove such a tree I would need a Tractor and those cost money. So here is a simple guide to removing such pestilence permanently without resorting to hydraulics.

1. Get a guy to Climb the tree.

Get someone who can climb such trees (and there are plenty of them here that can do that) with a rope. Once he gets to the top of the tree, presumably where all the coconuts are, loop the rope securely to that part of the tree. Make sure that the bloke gets down alright, because if you need him to climb another tree, you need him in one piece.

2. Get a gang of tuggers to pull the other end of the rope.

Stationed on the other end of that same piece of rope, is a gang of people to pull the tree away from any structure, object or persons that could be in the way of the trees path down. Make sure that this gang is using a very long rope, so that if the tree falls, its top will fall a considerable distance from them. The best of course is to pull the rope at an angle and this would avoid any such near misses completely.

3. Have a go at the bottom of the tree trunk with a chainsaw or a machete.

This part is the tricky part. You need to have someone who can do damage to the bottom of the trunk. Whilst this is going on, the gang on the other end of the rope should maintain a constant tension on the rope. In order to do maximum damage, you need not go beserk of course, just cut out 2 wedges from the trunk, one on the side facing the tuggers and the other, on the reverse side. If all goes well, the tree will fall down.

4. Pick the tree apart when it is on the ground.

Once the tree is on the ground, it can easily be hacked to pieces using the same chainsaw/ machete collecting up coconuts and in my case, coconut branches that can be machined for Animal feed. The tree trunk is also a good source for wood, just make sure that if you cut  it up that you leave several days for the wood to dry up, making it easier to dismember. Also note that, the wood at the base of the trunk will be very much harder than the softer flexible tree top.

Have a Nice day. ;)

Bananaramas

If you have been floating around the markets this year, it does not look good at all.

Specifically if your looking at currencies and the weaknesses of such worldwide, we see an unnerving trend. That Prices all over the world have been steadily rising. The costs of doing business is on the up and if one still has not noticed, this has been going on for several years.

Is there really so much demand out there that stocks are at an all time high?

The last time I checked the Baltic Dry Index, (2 weeks ago) prices on there for dry bulk shipping had a flat line appearance for the year on year trend. This means whilst the rates on the BDI went up during 2012 for  seasonal demands, the price index had fallen to a new (low) precedent. That means that there is now no new demand to justify an increase in BDI rates as per the previous year ie 2011.

So why are prices going up?

Is it speculators?

Speculators operate on the premise that there is money to be made whilst speculating, and if the speculators are all flocked at the source, it means that whoever who is in charge of supply has a virtual monopoly over supply, for whatever it is of course.

However we see that the price rise is not for specific items or indices, it is in fact a general and across the board price rise. Everything from Oil to Gas, Feed to Fertilizer has been going up, and up and up and there is no adjustment at all to the prices. The economy appears to be in a bubble. 

If it is in a bubble, there is only one thing for sure and it is going to pop.

If it does, expect the currency market to become like the Banana Money as shown above, all bravado and backed by absolutely nothing, and hence, utterly worthless.

Have a nice day :)

Rising prices, Brokers and Animal shortages.

Have I reviewed 2013 yet? No I have not. So here is 2013's outlook and what it means.

Last years unmitigated collapse in the market can very easily spin out of control. So far what I've seen this year only leads me to the conclusion that prices only go up despite flaccid demand and selling low in order to maintain an edge is not an option anymore. Everything else that you depend on is on the uptick even if your slashing costs on the front lines and what about supply?

Rumors are that there has been a steady price increase year on year and this has been happening for the previous 5 years. That agricultural pesticides etc used in palm oil have had adverse effects on Animal growth and size, that speculators not breeders have taken over the marketplace, adding little or no value to the product and selling at a premium that most people can not afford. That feed companies are raising prices regardless of the quality of their products selling on name only and not on actual mineral content of their feed.

Is this the truth? Yes it is I'm afraid, at least that is what I would be saying if I was doing a projection for this year. I would take the Worst case scenario and use that as my basis to determine if there is a business case for 2013. Add to that elections, possible weakness in Currencies and poor upfront demand and 2013 looks like the year where the RMS Zebutanic is going to have its day of reckoning.

Seriously of course, we have had a relatively good start for the year, with sales up and with a consistent stream of buyers week on week. The slack isn't that there are no buyers, but that there is no supply. Supply prices rocketed upwards in the early part of 2013, but this has not affected us so far, because we still have plenty of overpriced stock from last year to pump up and sell in 2013. The issue is when the stock runs out.

Sustainability is the focus for 2013 not viability. Any business can be viable in the short term, but not sustainable in the long run. Here is where the efforts to solve the issue should be, in cracking this issue. One way is to go and find suitable stock. The other is to let whatever that is broken be, and set up something else in its place that can make money. I'm looking at both ends and is convinced that this year is the year where there will be some undertaking of the Dairy end of the business.

Also it looks more and more like the end of an era. The days of consumers getting a good deal for quality cattle to slaughter are coming to an end. With the prices and the kinds of animals we have seen so far, I'm putting my money on a 2012 style collapse for this year and the rest is a bonus of course.

That is just my way of making a molehill out of a mountain.

Auf Wiedersehen. :)