COUNTRY & FARMING
AS SUMMER is more or less over, September kicked off with the ever more popular “Love Lamb Week” and we were once again supporting the notion, which aims to encourage consumers to get cooking with home-bred British – and of course PGI Welsh – lamb.
We have said it many times before – our lamb is of the finest quality and those who have tasted it will, I am sure, agree that it stands out as a premium product.
However, producing a premium product is of no use if we a) have no market to sell it to and tariffs make it uneconomical to pursue such food production; or b) consumers perceive it as the source of all environmental and climate-change problems and turn the other way for meat-free options.
Three years on from the EU referendum and one of the most complex issues we still face in light of our exit from the European Union are the trade negotiations.
We know that if we don’t have an export market after October 31, 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 tariff-free to the EU.
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 be looking at some serious problems. It is, after all, responsible for more than 20% of the UK production.
Indeed, the consequences of a nodeal Brexit would be catastrophic and potentially see the destruction of our sheep industry, disintegration of our rural communities and the end for our rural economy.
The survival of our rural economies and the future of our lamb industry to a huge degree depend on the success of those trade negotiations. As an industry, we sincerely hope for more than a miracle if we are to continue producing Welsh lamb as a premium product for generations to come.
The other threat to our premium product is, of course, the consistent bashing we have seen for some time now, blaming livestock farming for a myriad of problems across the globe and actively encouraging consumers to opt for heavily processed foodlike substances instead.
Arguments about the negative impact livestock have on the environment, water consumption and our own health, have gone mainstream but are frequently factually incorrect and short-sighted.
Indeed, reports highlighting the large quantities of water needed to produce meat and dairy products are well of the mark in a Wales context, where it’s mainly rainwater which irrigates the lush pastures.
Such reports and many others like it are based on global figures which group together the extensively reared cattle and sheep of Wales with the intensive farms of the US, giving consumers the wrong impression of what actually happens on our farms and the environmental impact our farmers and livestock have on the environment.
Let’s not forget that in a temperate, wet climate such as Wales, grassland water requirements are adequately met by rainfall – which in turn means that our Welsh lamb doesn’t have the negative impact as some would have us believe.
Meanwhile British supermarkets are selling thousands of tonnes of avocados from Chile, where villagers claim water is being diverted from illegal pipes to irrigate their crops, causing wells to dry up. And did you know that it takes 74 gallons of water to produce one pound of avocados?
And those who think that tucking into a meat substitute food-like product is better for their health may want to think again – some products even warn you that the mycoprotein may cause intolerance in some people.
In reality, would you actively choose pea protein isolate, expellerpressed canola oil, refined coconut oil, and maltodextrin over a good, honest lamb chop?
We’re by no means advocating one diet over the other – it is, after all, about free choice and personal preference – but if your aim is to do your bit for the environment, climate change, keeping food miles down and being healthy, how about eating local, seasonal produce wherever possible, following the full story of the foods you eat?
That way you can have peace of mind about water use, reduce carbon emissions and be sure that what you’re eating was produced to some of the highest health and welfare standards and doesn’t contain ingredients normally only found in a science lab.
The survival of our rural economies and the future of our lamb industry to a huge degree depend on the success of these EU trade negotiations