A growing world population, a rapidly emerging middle class in the new economies and a recovery from recession in mainland Europe and the UK heralds a time of unprecedented opportunities for the British beef and dairy industry. Blips in the upward trends shouldn’t distract from the overall objective of growth. The Irish agri sector is optimistic for a bright future and for example, post quota removal, their dairy farmers are tooling up for an increase in output of 50% by 2030.
All the ingredients for driving the Irish optimism are the same for their compatriots on this side of the water. Responding to increased domestic and global demand, and displacing imports with home produced product, provides fantastic opportunities for British farmers. Failing to respond to the global changes will herald difficult times for the British farmers as their competitors globally are scaling up and the battle for market share will be intense. Standing still is not an option but for British farmers to compete effectively the entire supply chain has to respond as a unit.
Criteria for Success
Confidence
A key criteria for success is confidence; confidence in the sector, confidence in the range of products produced, and confidence in the capabilities of British farmers and the associated industry to respond to market demands. Crucial to future success will be young people and careers in the agri-food sector, whether on farm or further up the chain, are now attracting some of the brightest and the best young talent.
Courses in the agriculture colleges, institutions and universities have never been more popular and with this ammunition, the sector has to be optimistic for a great future. It is important to keep the wind in the sails of the young people as investment in them is an investment in the future. There is no place for negativity, which will only serve to drive many potential stars to alternative careers. The British agri sector needs all the best players on the team if it is to realise its full potential.
Competitive
The dairy and beef business is a global competition, therefore to survive British farmers have to be as efficient as they possibly can and maximize the competitive advantage of the British production systems and the knowledgeable work force. The research institutions must remain focused on research that delivers improvements in efficiency. For dairy farmers, the fortunes of the liquid milk market often dictate the fortunes of the sector but the opportunities for value added dairy products in the domestic and global market are many and innovative research is needed to capitalise on market demands. Similarly more innovation is needed in convenient ready to cook beef products and the sector needs to move beyond mince and burgers.
Reaching, or approaching, total self-sufficiency in existing products like beef, cheese, butter, yogurt and milk powders would result in substantial additional production requirements.
Creative
There needs to be more creativity in how the land, the people, and the products are marketed and promoted. When one sees cows grazing in a field on a carton of milk in China, that’s an ‘image’, whereas dairy and beef cattle grazing in the fields of Britain are a ‘reality’ for many months of the year. British farmers for generations have owned and worked on their farms and have a pride and passion unrivalled anywhere in the world. However, the EBLEX and the Red Tractor may be well recognised in the UK as marks of product and process quality assurance but internationally there is no recognisable identifier of British products to attract the premium price they deserve.
The traditional British beef breeds have a discernible quality difference and a rich history and some marketing initiatives have proved very successful at positioning them in the very top price range demonstrating what is possible. There are no shortage of high networth individuals globally who could be persuaded to consume the best of British.
The intellectual capability of British farmers is another major point of differentiation that isn’t capitalised upon.
Cooperation
The farmers and the other industry players must work together and a way has to be found for a fair share of the profit margins to be evenly distributed to allow everyone who is working efficiently to earn a reasonable living.
Stakeholders in both the beef and dairy sector have ambitious targets and are capable of performing better but it is impossible to plan effectively with the uncertainty, re: the return on investments in terms of infrastructure, livestock and labour. Improved on farm efficiency and value creation in the supply chain can only come from long term trusting relationships and an equitable distribution of margin. A team approach, with individual star performances, is the recipe for success. An un-united dysfunctional supply chain is a recipe for failure.
Compliance
The recent horse meat in beef scandal has demonstrated the adverse consequences for entire sectors of being associated with consumer confidence damaging events. Brands and reputations that take years to build can be irreparably damaged overnight by adverse publicity, therefore, there can be no room for non-compliance.
Food is globally distributed and so is the media with the conventional channels feeding off the social media and vice versa, and both have an insatiable appetite for sensational stories. Truth and fiction can become interchanged in the race to have the most outlandish coverage and generalisations can be made from the substandard practices of one operator that can damage an entire industry.
Credit
There is a clear correlation between investments and productivity gains. Assessing credit requires a demonstrable ability to repay loans, which necessitates milk and beef prices returning a respectable margin to farming businesses and long term supply contracts.
Competencies
In the British agrisector many of the stakeholders work within their confined areas, operating within their sphere of competencies, whether it is genetics, nutrition, animal health, animal welfare or food safety, without realising the real objective of their activities. Phenomenal advances have been, and are being made, in animal genetics and breeding strategies. Relentless selection of production traits has delivered us very different animals from those our forefathers tended. Ruminant nutritionists are far ahead of their human counterparts when it comes to diet formulation. The modern dairy cow is a finely tuned metabolic athlete and nutrition, rumen activity, husbandry practices and milk yield are inextricably linked. Similarly the food conversion efficiency and weight gain for the modern beef animal are very different from heretofore and genomics is contributing to progress in the beef sector as it did, and is still doing, for the dairy sector.
On the dairy side breed types have dramatically reduced individual variability and the high yielding, but more difficult to manage, dairy cow now dominants. On the beef side eating quality and standardising breeds are presenting challenges as different consumers seek different quality attributes. Genetics creates the potential and nutrition delivers on it but suboptimal animal health or welfare can undermine any gains from the former two. Good animal health status is essential for the production of high quality safe food and, in addition to the control of zoonotic disease, the production damaging diseases, such as TB and Johne’s, need to be effectively dealt with if efficiency targets are to be achieved. Furthermore, stressed animals are more prone to disease so good welfare is also essential. The production of safe food should be a goal for all engaged in the beef and dairy sectors. Those working in animal genetics, in feed mills and on farms are as much in the food business as those operating processing facilities or hotels and restaurants. However producing safe food is not the final end game.
Food is the fundamental fuel for human health and ‘you are what you eat’ is a true dictum. Diet related diseases, and obesity related health problems in humans, are major public health issues in both developed and developing countries.
Increasingly primary agricultural output is coming under the spotlight in both the scientific and general media for contributing to human health problems. There are many organisations mounting attacks on the beef and dairy sectors and new substitute products are emerging and being promoted. It behoves the industry to address the issues and robustly defend its output.
Fortifying liquid milk with vitamins and minerals to produce ‘super-milk’ may be moving it from the wholesome natural product that consumers expect and it is a fine line, with the regulatory labelling requirements, as to when milk stops being milk and becomes a processed product. However, increasingly cows are being bred, and micronutrients are being fed, to deliver a healthier final product whether it is less saturated fat, more vitamins or minerals, more omega 3 etc, straight from the cow. Similarly grass fed beef has a different omega 3:omega 6 ratio to grain fed beef and now it is possible to add micro-nutrients to cattle in feedlots to reproduce these grass advantages.
Human nutrition is key to health so the final objective for most activities in the agri sector should be ‘improved human health’ and all engaged in activities along the food chain should consider themselves in the ‘human health business’. Doctors and nurses are not in the health business; rather they are in the sickness business.
Once everyone in the agri-sector accepts that the end game is human health, (Figure 1), consumer protection will become paramount and the rationale for biosecurity in mills and on farms and increased attention to detail along the production cycle and supply chain will be more apparent. A greater understanding of why robust controls are essential at every stage will increase compliance.
Threats
We have to be optimistic for the future, provided we can avoid adverse publicity associated with (i) food safety, (ii) animal welfare, (iii) health and nutrition and (iv) negative environmental impact.
(i) Food Safety: Healthy animals are inextricably linked to safe food and the farmer is the first link in the chain and it is their responsibility to hand over safe products to the next custodians of safe food along the supply chain. Our food chain is only as strong as its weakest link, everyone must be on the ball as one shoddy operator can damage an entire sector so everyone at every stage is a custodian of the national brand.
(ii) Animal Welfare: There is a disconnect between consumers and modern agricultural practices with, in terms of animal welfare, small being considered good and large being considered bad. However, it is not the size of the operation that dictates the animal welfare status rather it is the management capabilities. Primary producers in their strive for efficiency and scale need to be cognisant that what they may deem as efficient operations may be considered as factory farming by a discerning public.
(iii) Nutrition and Health: Increasingly primary agriculture output is being demonised in the media as being unhealthy with headlines like ‘red meat causes cancer’ and ‘saturated fats clog up your arteries’ eroding consumer confidence. However primary agricultural output is included in the official Government nutritional guidelines for a healthy diet. When one sees the plethora of obesogenic foods, and products of dubious nutritional value, on our supermarket shelves, one has to say the beef and dairy sectors do a poor job of defending their output.
It is now possible to change the composition of eggs, meat and milk by modifying the rations of the livestock. Heretofore, animal nutrition companies used to state as their mission ‘to improve food conversion efficiency, weight gain or egg or milk yield’, however now one company has as their mantra ‘advanced animal nutrition for the benefit of human health’. By modifying the composition and micronutrients in livestock rations, the vitamin, mineral, and fatty acid composition of the subsequent human food can be altered. Furthermore research is increasingly exploring how we can enhance the nutritional properties of food to make it healthier and address consumer concerns.
Life-stage Nutrition
The dairy sector’s expertise in producing a product that equates exactly to the nutritional requirements of infants of various ages is now the model for addressing the nutritional requirements of a range of consumers.
Sports nutrition has been the second category where researchers are adopting innovative approaches to addressing the different physiological requirements of athletes. Major strides are now being made in creating nutritional products for the elderly. Sarcopenia is a condition where we lose muscle mass with age, explaining how we become frail, prone to falls and lose our independence. Combating sarcopenia by slowing down this muscle loss can effectively slow down the aging process and put the agri-food sector in competition with the high margin cosmetic industry.
One of the most bioavailable sources of protein is whey, a by-product of cheese historically considered a waste product confined to weaner pig rations where its anabolic properties were seen to good effect. These anabolic effects are now used to build muscle in athletes and similarly to slow down the muscle wasting that comes with aging. Producing innovative products for different live stages and levels of activity is emerging in human nutrition. The concept is not foreign to animal nutritionists where a pig can enjoy 7 or 8 different diets, from creep feed to final finisher ration, during its short life.
One only has to look at the range of diets on display on supermarket shelves for dogs of different ages and different sizes to realise that animal nutritionists are way ahead of their human counterparts when it comes to tailoring particular diets for particular nutritional requirements. The dairy sector has extracted a range of nutritional constituents from milk and the major processors are in the ingredients rather than the milk business. The challenge for the meat industry is to see if they too could do likewise and mine their products for nutritious constituents. It is interesting that the beef sector controls much of the pet food industry where they have mastered life stage nutrition for dogs but have fallen well behind the dairy sector when it comes to addressing the health and nutritional requirements of their human customers.
(iv) Environmental Impact: Sustainable intensification is now the buzz word and many individuals, companies and organisations are developing new sustainability indicators encompassing energy, and chemical use in the livestock sector, as well as impacts on net greenhouse gas and nitrogen emissions and water use. Minimising the impact of production whilst optimising output and quality is the basis upon which British farmers will achieve commercial success, sustainability is about efficiency and not an added cost!
What business are you in?
When people ask you the question ‘what is your most valuable asset?’ it is not your farm, your house or your stocks and shares but your health that is the answer. There is nobody who wouldn’t give the lotto winnings to have somebody they love who is ill well again or somebody they love who has died back. So there is no better business to be in than the health business. So stand proud: working together efficiently is the way forward, you can’t change the past but if you make the correct decisions now you can influence the future!