Our farming economyenvy of the world

Sometimes the best things are hiding in plain sight. As the North-east regional economy develops, we have become used to the agricultural landscape that knits our region together.

That landscape is world-renowned as the source of the very best in agricultural production. Using a combination of traditional methods and standards and globally respected technology, we are the engine room behind the creation of the very best livestock production. Sometimes, perhaps too often, we take that for granted. We shouldn’t, and we should be shouting about it from the rooftops!

ANM Group was a proud sponsor of the recent Taste of Grampian event in Aberdeen at P&J Live - an annual celebration of all that we produce, and the way that we produce it. It brought visitors from across the country to taste the very best that we bring from farm to fork, along with some of the country’s best chefs who were rightly keen to join us and make use of the best of the North-east.

Last year at ANM, we celebrated our 150th anniversary - as one of the UK’s largest and most successful co-operatives, and a business owned by so many of those involved in local food production. Our auction ring is the weekly meeting point for the buyers and sellers, and our revolutionary online platform allows participation from so many others who recognise that the North-east of Scotland has a provenance and the built-in quality of food production that they want to be part of.

It seems so obvious when it’s part of our everyday experience at Thainstone that we should be more vocal in promoting our credentials across the North-east and beyond. But for many, it’s hiding in plain sight. For too many, it hardly needs saying that our standards are higher than anywhere else on the planetbut they are. It hardly needs saying that our unique geography provides a peerless environment for rearing the best livestock in the worldbut it does. Our traceability and transparency across the food chain is like nowhere else, and we should be bursting with pride about that.

It’s time we started to be more on the front foot in promoting our unique regional offer. Taste of Grampian was a great start; but there’s a generational opportunity to promote ourselves to domestic consumers who have forgotten the quality offer we hold, and to the global audience who know we have the produce they need.

Quality, provenance and history

- an unbeatable North-east combination!