Dovecote Park pays Angus farmers more

Dovecote Park has been praised for raising the price it pays to its beef farmers supplying Aberdeen Angus breed cattle.

Dovecote – the sole beef supplier to Waitrose – has increased the price it pays for Aberdeen Angus from 360p/kg to 370p/kg.

The increase represented a significant step forward in safeguarding domestic beef supply, the National Beef Association said. It was “an important development in the adjustment of UK prime cattle procurement to the current global and EU supply/demand imbalance”, it said. If Dovecote’s current procurement policy continued, it could be expected to continually readjust its price so it was consistently ahead of its rivals, making it a price-maker, it added.

Dovecote said it had made the move to make it financially viable for farmers hit by rising on-farm input costs to stay in the beef industry.