Viewpoint: Will Jackson, AHDB

Trading through Brexit
Life is going to be slightly different after Brexit, it’s just a question of how we make the best of that. There’s certainly been a lot of talk about it for the last however many years. When we look at the challenges and opportunities, we will potentially be weakening our relationship with one of our biggest consumers, especially from a sheep point of view. At the moment just over a third of the lamb produced in the UK is exported to Europe, and about 94% of that goes to France. We have a huge reliance on that market, so keeping it open and potentially tariff-free will be really, really important – there’s a bit of a risk there. The other side of the challenge is that more countries will be able to import than have done previously. We’ve had protection as members of the EU, and we may see more variety – particularly on the beef side. Provided trade deals happen we’ll have the chance to grow exports which will help us balance our carcasses over here in a more effective way. We’ve been on the front foot on this over the last few years – and got access to China for beef as AHDB worked with Government last year, which allows us to access that market. That’s going to be a really important for us but it won’t be the whole answer; we need to keep exploring those export opportunities.

Countering anti-meat propaganda
I think the merit of some of our farming systems are getting lost in the arguments: a lot of the big headline figures are global, not reflective of UK systems. There are huge differences between the US and what’s being done in the UK, for example. If you drill down into figures, in the UK ruminants account for between three and four per cent of greenhouse gas emissions (agriculture accounts for about nine per cent, and ruminants create half of that). That’s actually really low, and I think that gets overlooked. One of the challenges we’ll probably continue to face is that we’re looking at quite sensational headlines. Beef tends to provide those headlines quite well because of the big feed lots used in other countries, but getting a nuanced picture of how beef actually works is a bit of a challenge. At AHDB we’re positive that we need to keep having those arguments. We’re fortunate in this country that we have the climate and topography to grow grass very effectively. Around 60% of UK agricultural land is only suitable for growing grass, and the best way to get a high-nutrient food source off that grass is to put it though sheep or cattle. So we’re actually using what we have to the best effect. What goes undiscussed sometimes is that we have a huge amount of locked-up carbon within that grassland, and the sequestration where it pulls further carbon from the atmosphere. I think a lot of the time this issue is being looked at in a rather 2D way; there is real benefit to having those ruminants on the hillsides and keeping grasslands managed and able to soak up that carbon. Farmers feel under attack from some quarters at the moment, and that they haven’t had the chance to put their side of the story across. We shouldn’t forget that, according to our research, 0.6% of the population are following a vegan diet. So although there’s a lot of noise out there, it’s noise from a fairly vocal minority. We still have 98% of households purchasing meat on an annual basis, and a lot of people still eating and enjoying red meat regularly as a really important part of a balanced diet. Red meat adds nutrients and minerals that are very, very difficult to get hold of if you’re not eating it, so we need to keep everything in context. The noise doesn’t necessarily represent the overall feeling.

‘Peak meat’
Over the last 20 or 30 years there’s been a gradual decline in the consumption of red meat, so this isn’t a new thing. People often feel that this issue for red meat has been around for 12 or 14 months. Actually, if you look at Government policy and the reduction in the number of animals and their environmental impact, things are very positive. We’ve been working on this for a number of years. The trick is to make sure people have the data in front of them to help them make an objective decision. We need to help people make an informed choice, rather than plump for an easy fix – ‘I’m going to drop red meat from my diet’ – because [addressing climate change] is not as simple as that. There’s huge talk about carbon because that’s one of the easiest metrics we have when we’re talking about climate. But if we look at production as a whole? What about water used? What about other impacts? These need taking into account as well.

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