Sheep meat industry will die without foreign trade

SUMMER has more or less come and gone, the show season is drawing to a close and we now start preparing for the autumn season. September kicks off with the ever more popular Love Lamb Week and the FUW is once again supporting the notion, which aims to encourage consumers to get cooking with home-bred British – and of course Welsh – lamb.

Our lamb is of the finest quality and those who have tasted it will agree that it stands out as a premium product. However, producing a premium product is no use if we have no market to sell it to. With this in mind, we must realise that one of the most complex issues we face in light of our exit from the EU is the trade negotiations.

But why does that matter to you and me? Let’s look at, for example, the 2014 import and export figures for the lamb/sheep meat sector. If we don’t have an export market, then we will have too much lamb for our own market, even if all imports were banned.

What we must remember is that 40% of UK sheep meat is exported. It is also a seasonal product and the UK relies on the fact that it can export cuts of meat that are less popular with our consumers, which balances our carcass sales out.

So if we lost access to that market, Welsh agriculture could face some serious problems. It is, after all, responsible for more than 20% of the UK production.

In addition, the recent FAPRI report highlighted that a hard Brexit – meaning the UK fails to achieve a trade agreement with the EU and defaults to WTO tariffs and quotas for all trade – could result in a 30% fall in prices and a 20% fall in Welsh production in the sheep sector. That would mean the destruction of our sheep industry, disintegration of our rural communities and the end of our rural economy.

The consequences for Wales would be severe. While there are nearly 60,000 people working full and part-time in farming, farms are just a link, albeit a crucial one, in a complex supply chain involving upstream businesses such as vets, feed merchants, mechanics and contractors, as well as downstream businesses such as hauliers, markets and food businesses.

So as we head towards the end of the year, with our exit from the EU imminent and very little progress made in negotiations, the FUW reminds those in charge that #FarmingMatters. Our rural economies depend on the success of those trade negotiations, which must be an absolute priority if we are to continue producing lamb as a premium product.