RED TRACTOR:
SUPPORTING NON-ASSURED GRAIN TO HAVE ACCESS TO FEED MILLS Written by Steve Ridsdale, Arable Farmer
All eyes now on AIC and the feed mills Red Tractor (RT) released a statement on 23rd November from Jim Moseley, chief executive of RT, saying "Red Tractor recognises and supports the principle for all UK growers to be free to choose which markets they access, whether they are assured or not". This comes after a group of growers, who came together on The Farming Forum, started working together to highlight the fact that feed mills would only purchase UK produced grain if it was farm assured under a scheme such as RT or Scottish Quality Crops (SQC). These exact same feed mills do not request imported crops to have any farm level assurance when operating under the Agricultural Industries Confederation (AIC) Universal Feed Assurance Scheme (UFAS). Representatives of the farmers requested a meeting with AHDB, which was held near Milton Keynes on 19th November, to discuss the unlevel playing field and how AHDB could help levy payers get fair market access which would no longer put them at a disadvantage to imported grain. It's a crazy situation where our own industry has made it more difficult for our own farmers to access their own markets. This is a market access issue, and it's been voluntarily created by our industry leaders. The NFU have supported RT and AHDB have financially supported RT. UK Farmers now either have to pay to be in a farm assurance scheme, or they have their market access cut off. Farmers have been voting with their feet, and resigning their NFU membership over this single issue. As an industry we're stronger together, so we need to quickly find a solution to this situation.
48 DIRECT DRILLER MAGAZINE
Red Tractor’s chief executive Jim Moseley who has recently been appointed to the government’s new Trade and Agriculture Commission and a Red Tractor press release states that he will work hard to protect and promote the interests of UK farmers (Image supplied by from same press release).
The RT statement went on to say
"We are urging the AIC to review and amend its scheme to create a route to market for non-assured domestic grain under FEMAS and its gatekeeper protocol. Equal opportunities to supply the UK's assured animal fed market should be given to domestic farmers as is afforded to imported grain". If AIC agree to this change, farmers will not need to be members of an assurance scheme such as RT or SQC to supply combinable crops to a UFAS feed mill.
Mills And Market Access There are 47,000 cereal producers in the UK, but only approximately 21,000 farmers in a recognised farm
assurance scheme. As a result of this, less than half of UK cereal farmers are currently able to access the feed mill markets. Meanwhile, imports are literally able to sail in on a boat with no requirement to be farm level assured and get unfettered access to our feed mill markets. All eyes will now be on the AIC and the individual feed mills to see if they back the amendment to give UK growers equivalent market access, which is no more onerous than they expect of imports. It will be interesting to see if farmer owned mills respond differently to non-farmer owned, and if mills will consider the wishes of their owners and suppliers, some of which will also be their animal feed customers.
What Will the New Requirements Be? We don't yet know the answer to that question. The important point is the principle that RT have agreed that non-assured grain should be able to
ISSUE 16 | JANUARY 2022
