Welcome to the Spring edition of Beef magazine Andrew Laughton

Welcome to the spring edition of the NBA’s Beef magazine. I should know better but in the kindest February we’ve had with the snowdrops out in force, the daffodils starting to come out grass growing and cattle looking over the gate I have to admit to being very tempted to open it! Thankfully experience won out and as I write this with a sharp frost and covering of snow last week I was pleased it had! As an old neighbour used to reckon; they eat with five mouths in the frost.

Eating with five mouths made me think that one will be plenty if the supermarkets are going to keep us all fed. The egg debacle along with the reduction in the pig herd and recently the rationing of some salad products must have some of theses retail buyers wondering what has hit them. Gaps on the shelves must be concentrating their minds. Clearly it puts the suppliers in the driving seat – or so you would think and for how long? Rest assured that those concentrated minds will find ways to get themselves back in the ascendancy. My worry is that the shortages and/or price of pretty much every commodity will give the retailers the scarce little reason they need to look abroad to fill those gaps. Thankfully most of the beef prices across the globe aren’t likely to be much competition in the short term - who would have thought that Southern Irish beef would be more expensive than ours? Whilst for the moment it is a nice feeling, I would warn of becoming complacent. agenda – I am mindful I will be shot down in flames for suggesting bringing more burden upon the industry but it is high time that we should be catching up and overtaking the opposition on EVERY front including the Green agenda. If we don’t we are at very real risk of giving the retailers that reason and coming second in the race to sell beef. Unthinkable… but then how many unthinkable things in the last 12 months do you want me to point at? We need to be able to hold the retailers to account and keep them serving our Great British Beef to our Great British consumers.

Perhaps the time is coming for the supply chain to work together; rather than being at odds within the industry. I’m sure the processors and the retailers face significant challenges but they need to also realise that we the farmers cannot deal with huge volatility whilst trying to produce on wafer thin margins – there is literally nowhere else to go. If you think the above is a flight of fancy then the following is clearly delusional! WHAT If ELMS and all within it were to work in tandem of what the market place wants and the farmer needs? What if it all tied magically together for best efficiency / green / welfare / soil / production? Okay, okay I will go and have a lie down! But think about it…. WHAT IF?

I can’t help but think that this is where British Beef PLC needs to up its marketing game and start to catch up on this Green

Take care

Andrew