Farmers’ voices must be heard

He says with environmental issues “quite significant” in this election year, any changes to environmental regimes must be balanced and fair.

“The outcomes in our rivers don’t just reflect farming; they reflect towns and cities and industries as well.”

He was speaking after the recent two-day Red Meat Sector conference in Dunedin, jointly hosted by the MIA with Beef + Lamb NZ.

Loughlin says dairy is seen as a “greater culprit” than sheep and beef, but a lot of catchments in NZ have both drystock farming and dairy.

And they include towns and factories, he adds.

“It’s important as we go through an election period in which emotional appeals are made to urban voters, that the appropriate perspective is applied and that the causes of water quality issues are correctly identified and correctly attributed as a basis for dealing with them. “This is because a lot of the rivers in the worst condition in NZ are around our cities and have nothing to do with farming. So we must be vigilant and make sure debates about water quality issues are factually based.”

Identifying trade barriers, market access and the rise of manufactured protein as major themes of the conference, Loughlin says the red meat sector faces challenges – as it has at every stage of its history.

“At the moment, commodity prices are at cyclical highs but there’s a lot of work to do in the sector to make us less susceptible to the other side of the cycle.”

BLNZ, MIA, MPI and MFAT are working together on preserving lamb access to Europe and Britain post-Brexit, when that single administrative market will be split into two.

“We’re pretty clear that the WTO gives us rights in respect of the tariff rate quotas we have at the moment,” Loughlin says. “We’re not seeing any signs of Britain or the EU trying to resile from those but it’s a single quota for both markets.

“Just trying to find a pragmatic answer that works for us and for the EU27 and for Britain is the work that’s going on there and that’s in the very early stages.”

He says although Britain and Europe are only a tiny market for beef they are very important for lamb, particularly lamb legs into UK and France, and some rumps and tenderloins into the continent.

“They are high-value markets where the best cuts of lamb are enjoyed by affluent people who pay high prices.”

Loughlin also identified increasing challenges with non-trade barriers – the various rules and red tape which countries may put in place to improve their own food safety standards but which may cause unintended issues for exporters to those markets.

An example is when rules might call for meat to be frozen, but do not account for NZ chilled lamb being as safe as frozen product.

Loughlin says that in most countries the farmers produce relatively short shelf-life fresh meat, while NZ has the techniques to produce long shelf-life chilled meat.

“Often what makes us successful is that meat freezes at a lower temperature than water, whereas often when they write rules they assume that 0 deg C (water’s freezing point) is an appropriate distinction between fresh and frozen.”

Developing countries are trying to lift their domestic standards to first-world standards but unless the science is understood there can be unintended consequences.

Loughlin says there’s “quite a bit of focus” for the sector on clearing up those issues as they arise and helping countries put in place rules for their own domestic production that work both for themselves and for us.

Meanwhile, Loughlin put in a plug for more farmers to get involved in the annual sector conference, which was slightly disappointing in having a lot of representation from the processing, marketing and servicing sides, but not so much from farmers.

“We made a bit of progress this year, but it would be a much better conference if more farmers attended.”