THE NEW UK FARM

Mark Rowe asks whether opening up the UK to meat from other continents will spell the end of British farming as we know it

In the wake of the new trade deal with Australia, Mark Rowe asks whether opening up the UK to meat from other continents will spell the end of British farming.

The year is 2035 and, with the final removal of all tariffs on Australian meat imports to the UK, the Jones family in Chester sits down to a Sunday roast of beef reared on Anna Creek Station in South Australia. With an area of 15,746 square kilometres it is more than half the size of Belgium (and that’s not taking into account the adjoining ranches owned by the same family). Just a few miles down the A55 in Wales, one of the few remaining Welsh family farms that rear sheep is preparing its highwelfare animals for processing into organic pies, sold at a premium price to a niche market.

Improbable? Follow the logic of the recent free trade agreement (FTA) between the UK and Australia, and this could well be where the UK farming sector winds up. Many farmers fear that they’ve been thrown to the wolves in the eager pursuit of post-Brexit trade deals and that the agreement with Australia is just the start of a process that will see similar deals secured with New Zealand and the mighty meat exporters of the USA, Brazil and Argentina. The outcome is uncertain. The negative view is that farming will wither on the vine. A more optimistic slant suggests that the FTA offers UK farming an unprecedented opportunity to not just export to the world, but to make nature-friendly farming widespread within the UK, to reverse decades of declines in bird and insect populations, and rejuvenate biodiversity more widely. What’s indisputable is that British farming faces its largest upheaval since the end of the Second World War. TRADE WITH AUSTRALIA

The response of the UK farming sector to the FTA with Australia has been almost universally negative. Trade in meat between the two countries is currently small, with 0.15 per cent of all Australian beef exports going to the UK, to the value of £4.1 million. The deal allows it to grow significantly. The quota for Australian beef allowed into the UK market will rise from 35,000 tonnes to 110,000 tonnes a year and from 25,000 tonnes to 75,000 tonnes for sheep meat. In reality, this allows the Australian meat sector to export as much meat as it possibly can to the UK. UK farmers fear that they won’t be able to compete on price with Australian livestock farmers. In particular, hill farmers in Wales, the north of England and Scotland would be unable to match the economies of scale applied in Australia, where eight of the world’s ten largest farms are located. Minette Batters, president of the National Farmers Union (NFU), described the advantages given to Australia as ‘incredibly significant’ and warned the government not to undermine British farming.

‘A lot of our overheads are down to our long winters and having to feed cattle indoors,’ says Wyn Evans, who farms 89 hectares of upland with 400 breeding ewes and 80 cattle near Aberystwyth. ‘Much is made of Australia’s

These maps show the major global players in the export of cattle, sheep and goats for meat consumption in 2020. These data are published regularly in reports prepared by the US Department of Agriculture. In the first map (top), all export quantities over 100,000 tonnes are included and the top five exporters are also shown with their respective export quantities. Member states of the European Union (EU 27) are shown as a combined export value. Data for beef exports are presented based on the weight of meat cuts and meat products, converted to an equivalent weight of a dressed carcass, expressed in metric tons carcass-weight equivalent (MT CWE). In the second map, sheep exports include meat from sheep and goats, either fresh, chilled or frozen, as published in the United Nations’ Comtrade Database. The map includes all exports over US$40 million, with EU countries being displayed separately. The five largest exporters are also labelled with their respective total export values.

Sheep on a farm in the Brecon Beacons, Wales

numerous countries. These practices include barren battery cages, sow stalls, hormone-fed beef, hot branding and mulesing. The UK has some of the highest welfare standards in the world, while Australia is among the least prohibitive. The data used here were assembled by the RSPCA. Standards for animal welfare vary significantly around the world, as this map demonstrates via a selection of countries that are also some of the largest meat exporters. As is evident, practices that violate widely accepted international standards on animal welfare are used, or at least not deemed illegal, in

A calf is branded on a farm in Oregon, USA, where the practice is legal