View from the Rostrum I Charlotte Green I LAA Business Co-ordinator

As the LAA’s business co-ordinator, my main responsibilities include the daily monitoring and auditing of the sale data that we receive from our member markets, throughout England and Wales. The data we receive includes all Store, Breeding and Finished market sales data for cattle, sheep and pigs, which is then used to populate our Market Sales Platform. I also have responsibility of the daily management and development of the Platform itself. 

The platform delivers live market prices for the benefit of LAA members, their customers, and the wider agricultural industry. The platform supports the agricultural industry by assisting subscribers to make informed decisions, improve and monitor performance, stay ahead of the competition and identify new market opportunities, through regular updates. We rely on our members submitting their sale reports as soon as practically possible following their sale, ensuring the data reaches our subscribers quickly and efficiently, and my role is to support them in doing this.

There are two subscription options, Daily and Real time. The Daily option is updated with new data at 12pm and again at 8pm, every day. You can access all Prime and Store sale data, compare by region or country and look back at sales from the last four weeks. The Real time/premium membership option gives you everything included in the Daily option, plus lots more. With Real time you can access the data as soon as we receive the sale report from the live ring, check data across all sale types, Prime, Store and Breeding, look back at the last twelve months’ worth of sale data and even compare by individual market. And on top of all of the above, Real-time subscribers also receive a weekly trade insight directly into their inbox plus, our newly featured ‘monthly trade round-up’, where we discuss and analyse trade from the previous month, compare this with last year, share the highlights and make our predictions for what’s to come! 

What’s next for Market Prices? Together with our members, we are passionate about providing market customers with the best tools to support their informed decision making when it comes to choosing where best to buy and sell their stock, using accurate and timely prices that have been achieved through the live auction ring, where open, transparent and competitive trade is created. Ensuring I regularly speak with our members regarding the data collection processes and discussing how we can develop the platform further, is fundamental to ensuring we continue to provide a thorough and reliable tool for our subscribers. We are currently further developing the mechanisms for collecting data on Dairy cattle and the best way to record lactation details for cows, something our members have highlighted as a positive addition to the current data sets available. We are also exploring ways in which we can improve the current categories reported for sheep sales; how best to capture the numerous different breeds of sheep and also the classifications that are marketed through the live ring. We know that both of these improvements will be very well received by our customers and we look forward to rolling out these developments in the coming months.

So, whether you are a data driven farmer, maybe you’re just curious, or you could just be starting out, use this link www.marketprices.laa.co.uk/register/ to register for Market Prices. Help stay ahead of trends, make smarter decisions and get the best return on your stock in the live ring.