All around the Mediterranean and across southern Europe, thousands of communities are waiting for this year’s olive crop to be milled. Until this year’s production is ready for packing, no new business can be written: there are no reserve stocks available. Every last litre has been sold and there will be no olive oil to sell before the first deliveries of the new crop year reach the market.
For months bulk olive oil prices have been sky high. As recently as August, some desperate buyers in Spain were paying almost 7,000 Euros a tonne for low-grade lampante that would normally have been a fraction of today’s prices. In August, the Spanish industry was forecasting a crop of 1.4 million tonnes of olive oil this year. This “business as normal” bravado is misplaced, since hot weather in the final weeks before the crop is gathered will affect the moisture content and can reduce the yield. In previous years, yields of 20% were average: but until this year’s crop reaches the mills, there is no reliable way of predicting finished tonnages. However, apart from wildfires, there is probably not a lot of additional damage that the environment could inflict on the nation’s olive groves.
The Spanish government is responding to the crisis by cutting VAT on olive oil from 5% to 4%, with effect from 2025. Consumers have seen retail olive oil prices rise from around EUR 3 / litre two or three years ago to hover around EUR 10 / litre now. The unthinkable is happening and Spanish consumers are buying sunflower oil instead of olive oil for home use. Since many households buy cooking oil in small quantities very often, Spaniards have suffered more from the rising prices than elsewhere in Europe. This is because most European retailers place huge orders immediately after the harvest is in, to cover the coming 12 months sales. This fixed price for the year means that retail bottle sizes can have stable prices for the duration, although there is a temptation for retailers to raise olive oil prices anyway, pushing up their margins.
Spain has imported 20,000 tonnes of olive oil this crop year, bringing Spanish consumer consumption and industry intake to a total of 100,590 tonnes. Bottler stocks in August were at an all-time low of 131,740 tonnes with a further 138,660 tonnes held by co-operatives and millers. Total production at the close of this crop year is expected top 820,000 tonnes, making it a poor year. An average season these days would be somewhere between one and two million tonnes of oil.
This year saw a closing of the gap between Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO) and cheaper grades. Paradoxically, strong demand for better grades meant that the market was picked clean, leaving mainstream buyers to pay more for lower quality grades because that was all there was left. Formerly used to fuel oil lamps, as the name suggests, today lampante refers to oil that needs work to return it to an edible grade. This means that lampante has a limited number of takers, since the consignment will need to go to a refinery, adding to the cost and commercial risk.
Turn the clock back to 2013 and the UK was divided over its membership of the European Union. Given the vehemence of the anti-EU campaigners, buoyed up with sympathetic media treatment, the 4% majority in 2016 was hardly a ringing endorsement for such a major change. The most memorable slogan of the time was “Brexit means Brexit.” Not surprisingly, there were also opportunities to use Machiavellian creativity to plug gaps in the Leave campaign.
It was a time in British politics when the civil service was flexing its muscles and in a position to engineer bids for power with a free hand, actively encouraged by Tory grandees like Francis Maude. Running the Cabinet Office, Maude had a new vision for the Civil Service, which was going to be set free from such tawdry constraints as public service: it was to be redefined and rewritten using People Impact Assessments (PIAs). The Cabinet Office led the way, setting up hybrid public/private joint ventures and mutuals in a bid to gain the best of both worlds, so to speak. These were not just government departments on steroids, these were new power structures of a sort that could be presented as a public service and a commercially savvy business at the same time.
“The government’s Behavioural Insights Team will take its first step to becoming a profit-making joint venture today as the Cabinet Office launches a competition to find a commercial partner for the business. Less than three years after it was set up in the Cabinet Office the team is the first policy unit set to spin off from central government. This has been employee-led as the staff of the BIT have driven the process and will continue to run the organisation.
“The team was established to find ways of encouraging, supporting and enabling people to make better choices for themselves. Since then it has delivered rapid results – identifying tens of millions of pounds of savings, spreading understanding of behavioural approaches within government, and developing a reputation as a world leader in its field. Demand for its services from within government, the private sector and foreign governments has grown significantly.”
The decade was to see a blurring of the distinction between public servant and executive power. If political factions ever needed to inject reliable, hand-picked people to oversee critical functions in the political process, a joint venture with a government department takes a lot of beating.
Networking and data services have been at the heart of a number of government joint ventures, with the government’s 25% stake being sold off at the end of the first ten years. So it was that the French business Sopra Steria bought out the Cabinet Office’s stake in Shared Services Connected Ltd in October 2023. Here is what they said at the time:
“The transition from joint venture to wholly owned subsidiary will not affect the management, employees, clients, or services of the business, which has delivered significant savings and value for money for the taxpayer.
“Since Sopra Steria founded the company with the Cabinet Office in 2013, SSCL has become the largest provider of critical business support services for the UK Government, Ministry of Defence, Metropolitan Police Service, and the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB), delivering shared services at scale.”
It is not uncommon for IT suppliers to be over-confident about their system’s ability to cope and there are signs that all is not well at the points of delivery in the UK. Dover issued a note to port users in early June, seeking details of operational failures with BTOM. Invoicing for the Brexit border tax has been plagued with errors, including double-billing.
Ten years ago, there can be little doubt that Francis Maude knew and understood the Sopra Steria motto of the day: “The world is how we shape it.” Reality has since dawned on the management and it has been withdrawn.
Time is running out for importers of food to the UK. On September 4 HMRC will demand its pound of flesh and the UK food industry will find itself between a rock and a hard place. This is not the first time that the deliberate destruction of the British economy by the departing government has been discussed on this site: it is still a live topic. Called the Common User Charge by civil servants, the UK’s stealth tax on food imports is also known as the Brexit border tax and doubtless has cruder titles.
Since August 4, many importers have been receiving their first invoices for Common User Charge (CUC. Importers of animal and plant products that would usually be considered for food safety checks can expect to pay over the odds for driving a lorry off a ferry at Dover to join the UK road network. Hauliers booking a DFDS one-way ticket online to Dover pay three pounds for this indispensable service, while lorries carrying grouped consignments of SPS foods face open-ended bills in the hundreds or low thousands for the same access. The simple explanation is that Britain is playing catch-up: the European Union had everything in place to trade with the UK as a third country the minute it ceased to be a member state. Britain was so totally convinced that it would somehow negotiate a favoured nation package Brexit that there was not even a sketchy idea of what a post-Brexit customs system might look like. The years passed, conveniently putting off the awkward moment when Brexit would be complete. As recently as November 2023, DEFRA describes the organisational basis for European food imports to the UK thus:
“Currently, imports from the EU and certain imports from Greenland, Faroe Islands and EFTA countries do not need to enter Great Britain via a BCP and are not subject to veterinary checks at the border.”
Just two months later, Britain was rolling out its three-phase Border Target Operating Model (BTOM). (The label ‘world-beating’ is optional.) Lorry drivers arriving in Britain have not been impressed by the service standards they have encountered on the ground (https://urbanfoodchains.uk/sevington-gives-cause-for-concern/), which is more of a hostile environment than a workplace.
DEFRA has gone from absentee administrator to nitpicking zealot overnight and is chafing over the accuracy of form-filling, notably for consignment detail on Export Health Certificates (EHC). Hang on to your hats, here is a sample:
“Continuous and/or deliberate non-compliance
It has come to our attention, that some traders and logistics companies are making continuous and/or deliberate errors including:
mis-declaring goods as low risk when they are medium;
or as medium when they are high;
not including a relevant Export Health Certificate (EHC) or Phytosanitary certificate.”
Or the consequences… :
“Continued non-compliance within either the EHC or the CHED is not acceptable and will not be tolerated by Port Health Authorities (PHAs). Deliberate misdeclaration is a criminal offence. PHAs will be actively looking to identify such behaviour.
“Where there is repeated non-compliance or evidence of misdeclarations, the appropriate authority will take statutory action. This will result in goods being held at a Border Control Post (BCP) for a physical inspection, which may lead to the consignment being ultimately returned or destroyed at cost to the person responsible for the load.”
Entering a conversation with a tone like that is doomed to become a monologue. Enough said. Now it just remains for the law enforcers to round up a bunch of suspects.
Since the end of April, Dover has been receiving a steady trickle of complaints about the way the Brexit border tax has been implemented. Here is what Dover had to say on the subject, again verbatim:
“As you are aware, the Border Target Operating Model (BTOM) checks have been operational for a month. Aside from initial teething problems, we are receiving a growing number of queries and concerns about how the checks are being carried out versus the costs that are being charged, delays to consignments, poor responses to calls and/or appropriate live assistance with your imports, the impact on biosecurity and the possibility of using Dover BCP to complete checks.
“It is important to understand your experiences so far to enable us to help establish simple solutions moving forwards, so we would like to set up a short call to discuss this with yourselves.
“Please drop us a line outlining your concerns and suggested solutions so we can escalate these for you. In addition, a member of our team may also call you.”
The simple fact is that the CUC started off on the wrong foot and is compounding ongoing problems on the way. It was cobbled together out of retained EU law. Its stated aim is to recover the operating costs of Border Control Posts in the UK, but this does not stand upto close inspection. Officially, CUC rates for privately-owned ports are set by their owners. At regular intervals, DEFRA kicks the distinction into touch by stating that the tax is being charged at Dover and the Eurotunnel terminal.
The port of Dover has belonged to the town since it was incorporated in 1608 by James 1. Some members of the port harbour authority board are appointed by the department of transport, but this is a working arrangement rather than a power grab.
At the beginning of June, Dover issued the following statement, which I cite verbatim:
“We are writing to you with reference to the ‘Operational Border Target Operating Model Information’ Defra circulated on the 03/06/2024 which contained a significant inaccuracy regarding the BCP for high risk food not of animal origin arriving via Dover within the section ‘Moving high-risk food and feed not of animal origin at the Short Straits’.
“To clarify, if you are importing high risk food not of animal origin (HRFNAO) through the Port of Dover, either via RORO ferry terminal and / or deep sea cargo, you must continue to pre-notify Dover Port Health Authority on IPAFFS using the Dover Terminal BCP code GBDOV2P and not, as outlined in the Defra information update, Sevington BCP.
“Official border controls on high risk food not of animal origin arriving via RORO freight have been undertaken at the BCPs in the Western Docks for over a decade and since 2019 at the Cargo Terminal GBDOV2P (in the Western Docks).
“Dover Port Health Authority will continue to provide this statutory function and ensure that your goods are handled efficiently and without undue delay. Please note, the Common User Charge does not apply to the Dover Cargo Terminal BCP. The Common User Charge will be applied if your goods are notified to Sevington BCP by selecting their different BCP code on IPAFFS.”
Dover port health staff carrying out food safety checks are being sidelined by DEFRA, which is telling importers that their goods should be routed through Sevington. Before shipping certain goods, importers must pre-register the shipment using a system called IPAFFS which is short for Import of Products, Animals, Food and Feed System. DEFRA is telling everyone to delete the Dover port code from the documentation and to change their IPAFFS point of entry to Sevington.
Staff at Dover have been carrying out SPS food safety checks for a decade, but they have never found themselves at loggerheads with DEFRA before. The root of the problem is the Border Operating Model (BTOM), which is not set up to manage product assessments requiring detailed knowledge and experience.
Assigning three levels of risk to food imports does not cover real life situations. Take High Risk Food Not Of Animal Origin HRFNAO, which is a detailed listing of food products that need to be checked for specific hazards. These can include central European blueberries, which are checked for radioactive Caesium 137 from Chernobyl; peanut products from north and south America, which are checked for aflatoxins; or US fishery products, for which processing hygiene standards vary widely.
There is a statutory compliance angle to these product checks, which are regulated by assimilated European laws. At this point they are beyond the remit of BTOM and DEFRA is not authorised to change their enforcement. So instead, the ministry has been advising importers to amend the IPAFFS entry from Dover to Sevington.
In the meantime, Dover port health staff continue to carry out the food safety checks that keep the nation’s food safe.
From the soaring concrete cliffs of Brussels there is an impending explosion of anger. The reason? Look at Charles Sharp’s impressive picture of a puffin, just about to enter the home burrow with a beak full of sand eels. It is the fish, not the bird, that is fanning the flames, by the way.
For all its comical looks, the puffin is an important indicator in the monitoring of the marine environment around the British Isles. Researchers are particularly interested in the fish stocks that support this distinctive seabird. The term sand eel is a generic label for a group of about 200 fish species that resemble eels but are not related. They burrow into sandy seabeds and hide from predators while keeping an eye out for their own lunch. Hard to catch in open water, they are easy to scoop up in a dredge, as Danish fishermen have done for centuries.
Puffins are far from being the only bird species to be tracked by scientists. It just happens to be the cutest one of the bunch. The puffins’ lunch, by the way, is at constant risk of damage from bottom trawling, that is to say beam trawls or dredgers and other devices. Scallops is one species to be caught in dredgers, while cod is a target species for many beam trawls.
Back in January this year, the UK government announced a ban on dredging for sand eels in UK-controlled Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). For the record, bottom trawling is allowed across 98% of the MPAs concerned, suggesting that the state of the seabed has not been a political priority for years. In the North Sea, with its sandy sea floors, there are still beam trawlers fishing demersal species and small number of Danish dredgers who, between them, hold about 90% of the 160,000 tonne sand eel fishing quota. (UK and EU total)
The origins of the Danish sand eel fishery go back to the soaring livestock holdings of the late nineteenth century, which set the Danes looking for cheap ways of feeding animals. Initially, small dredges were fitted to inshore boats, scaling up in the early twentieth century to purpose-built diesel powered vessels with an ever greater range. For some reason, as with a number of other fisheries, nobody imagined that the fish stocks would ever decline: until, that is, the catches started to drop. With growing numbers of animals on livestock holdings, the potential earnings from sand eels rose, as did the pressure on the fish stocks. Sand eels, along with other oily fish and suitable bycatch, are the ingredients of fishmeal, an industrial end product turned out in large quantities by refineries that earned a living clearing up after the high value fish processors in fishing ports.
In the early days of indoor livestock, fishmeal was added at two thirds to one third cereals. As researchers extended their knowledge of livestock nutrition, the proportion of fishmeal was reduced, making animal feed more profitable or cheaper, depending on your involvement in the process. To ensure an illusion of sustainability for food production in the late twentieth century, the European Commission devised the Common Fisheries Policy, which used its budget to subsidise a rise in the European fishing industry’s tonnage and horsepower, ensuring an ever more unstable fishing industry.
Fast forward to 2024, and the European Commission is threatening to trigger a dispute procedure under the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement (TCA). The Commission is acting on behalf of Danish sand eel fishers with fishing vessels to maintain. If agreement is not reached by mid-June, the Commission can request a judgement on the UK’s action. While any hearings may be carried over into September, the European Commission is calling for an “evidence-based, proportionate and non-discriminatory” approach to protecting marine environments.
“The UK’s permanent closure of the sand eel fishery deprives EU vessels from fishing opportunities, but also impinges on basic commitments under the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement,” warned commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius. “Measures are already in place to protect this important species, including by setting catches below the scientific advised levels and closed areas for protecting seabirds,” he added. London responded, saying that DEFRA had not authorised any sand eel quota for British vessels for the past three years. Marine protection NGOs across Europe have launched a campaign to end bottom trawling, which is still allowed in 90% of the EU’s marine protected areas (MPAs). Last year Europe agreed to an EU Marine Action Plan that phases out bottom trawling by 2030. This has some way yet to go.
According to the European Market Observatory for Fisheries and Aquaculture Products (EUMOFA) the EU produces between 10% to 15% of the world’s fishmeal and fish oil output. Tonnages of EU fishmeal range from 370,000 tonnes and 520,000 tonnes, while fish oil ranges between 120,000 and 190,000 tonnes. Denmark accounts for nearly half the EU’s total output. In addition to sand eels, EU processors use small pelagics, such as sprats, whiting or herring, all regulated with quotas and topped up with trimmings from fish processors. EU demand for fishmeal has dropped in recent years and is currently hovering around 450,000 tonnes/year.
Sky News is currently streaming an overview of British farming (https://news.sky.com/story/it-keeps-me-awake-at-night-can-british-farming-survive-13132220) which raises a number of questions that have been dodged for years and are coming home to roost with a certain inevitability. They are as predictable as ever, as intractable as ever and demand answers as urgently as ever. The only certainty is that the farming sector faces a crisis which has been ignored for years and will no longer wait in an orderly queue.
The first thing that needs to be made clear at the outset is that there is no such creature as an average farmer. The Sky presentation is very careful to choose visually tame representatives of a sector that is universally misunderstood. Sky’s lead journalist on this reporting, the west of England and Wales correspondent Dan Whitehead, would doubtless agree that despite the rapidly falling numbers of farmers in Britain, there is no such creature as an “average” farmer anywhere in the world.
The industrial world develops and markets a range of specialist vehicles and technology for a sector that has as many solutions for its many technical challenges as it has practitioners. The general public, in Britain and further afield, has no problem synthesising a stereotype notion of a nonexistent rural world. In the process, any suggestion of a viable business model runs counter current to the town dweller’s vision of a rural idyll.
It would not be productive to imagine that rural businesses are complementary to industrial or urban economic structures. Nor can the transport and distribution networks that link urban consumers to an imagined rural hinterland ever ensure that each business gets what it needs in a timely manner.
A frequent town dweller’s notion of a farm is more like a zoo than a production unit. Go back a century or so to George Orwell’s Animal Farm and you encounter a group of anthropocentric livestock: hens, pigs, cattle and heavy horses. Truth to tell, if it ever existed, this diverse community of livestock was a casualty of the first world war. The two million British equine casualties had a greater impact on warfare and industry than the loss of several millions of military personnel or civilians killed in air raids elsewhere. British army officers were required to supply a horse’s front hoof when reporting an equine casualty, whereas they did not need to furnish any such grisly evidence for human casualties among their ranks.
The wartime massacre of draft horses was beyond the breeding capacity of the northern hemisphere and cleared the way for mechanisation in both rural hinterlands and metropolitan centres alike. The British army bought in horses from as far away as North America, but they were ill-suited to military requirements.
Both agriculture and industry have exhibited huge appetites for energy during the past two centuries. The combined effects of converting the plains of North America into a grain exporter on a continental scale. This was accompanied by the relentless westward advance of the railroads through the 1850s and 1860s, hauling wheat back to the east coast and shipping it on to Europe.
The age of steam put bread on the tables of starving cities. It may even have given urban populations a passing curiosity as to where food comes from and what sort of people might produce it. But the only people that ever had contact with producers and consumers were traders with a limited interest beyond crop forecasts and spot prices. It is hardly surprising that during the intervening decades, a parallel web of dreams fed on pictures in books and magazines should inhabit part of the cultural vacuum between town and country.
Dan Whitehead’s rural narrative assembles facets of the agricultural world as a kaleidoscope might do. He starts by talking to Welsh sheep producer Rhodri, who has seen a 40% cut in his income, now shorn of subsidy. He is worried that his school age son will not inherit the family farm.
Outdoor pork producer Jeff laments the supposed passing of the British pig industry. Like many British pig producers, he believes his European counterparts are subsidised as generously as they have ever been. He can’t go into a supermarket without spotting foreign meat: pork chops from Spain, chicken from Poland and Brazil. He can sum up Brexit in one word: “atrocious”. From his farm in Kent, Jeff drove a tractor up London for a city centre protest. Like many in the pig sector, he is adamant that breeders have been thrown under a bus by a government that doesn’t care. “There’s an unfairness in British agriculture,” he argues. Looking at the deals the UK government signed with Australia and New Zealand, he might have a point.
Nearby, fruit grower Tim has built up a strawberry business valued in tens of millions of pounds. He needs a workforce of 2000 to pick thousands of tonnes of strawberries. Most of his recruits are from EU member states. When the UK was in the single market, workers could move freely with no time limits. Now they are limited to six months and have to move on regardless of whether or not they are a net gain or a net drain on their employer. Tim is frustrated because he cannot negotiate prices for his crop from a solid position.
There are plenty of British pig producers who will argue that foreign pigmeat is hindering domestic producers, but the story is a little bit more subtle than that. If British producers could earn a living off the sales of pork loins, they would cheerfully do so. Since loins are used for roasting joints or bacon, there will always be buyers for this cut. This often leads to a situation whereby British loin are sold through for roasting joints. Meeting demand for bacon packers, there is a steady trade in pigs from Dutch and Danish units. These have been raised to British standards for decades and are effectively competing on a level field, even if their British counterparts see it differently. The key to staying in business is referred to as balancing the carcase, ensuring that every saleable part of the carcase is sold. Hams or gammons are straightforward to prepare for the retail market and represent a good return. What British pig breeders often overlook, however, is that they will routinely export forequarters to cutting halls in northern Europe, which have skilled workforces that make short work of the technically challenging forequarters. These are home to the animal’s powerful jaw muscles. If a pig bites your hand, count your fingers as soon as you’ve stemmed the bleeding.
On Your Farm presenter Charlotte Smith and Archers’ actor Lucy Speed open the programme from the middle of Devon by explaining that they are looking for a farm but are surrounded by large sheds and outwardly industrial structures. Somewhere in this seemingly inappropriate setting, they are expecting to meet Andy Gray, a possible finalist for one of the programme’s annual awards.
Andy’s business bridges the gap between livestock farmers and end users of meat. He operates the large food grade cutting and packing lines that they saw on arrival. As well as selling dog food, he also farms 150 hectares of arable crops, as well as keeping a herd of deer and a herd of cattle. Other business activities in his eclectic business include a quarry for heritage building stone.
During the visit, the conversation turns to remedial best practice for soil and the new funding schemes for English farming, based on the provision of a public good such as healthy soil. Rothamstead soil scientist Andy Neil is on hand to discuss some of the vital detail. Charlotte Smith is impressed that Andy should have engaged a Rothamstead professional to measure the recovery of former arable fields. Andy, on the other hand is pragmatic: if he can’t quantify the improvements he is making on his land, he won’t get any government cash. Gotcha.
This week the UK delivered the world’s first fully digitally documented consignment of goods. Burnley engineering firm Fort Vale became the first UK exporter to put electronic documentation on an equal footing with paper forms. This was made possible by the Electronic Trade Documents Act (ETDA), which came into force on Wednesday. To be sure, the goods involved were not food products, but Urban Food Chains wanted to mark the occasion anyway. Here’s a link to the gov.uk statement.
Highly processed foods are a technical challenge for customs valuations, requiring standardisation and accuracy. In the EU the task of establishing a core element in the customs valuation is carried out by using a set of laboratory protocols to establish the precise proportions of dairy fats, dairy proteins and sugars.
The purpose of Meursing numbers is to provide a reliable way of calculating the duty on ingredients in highly-processed foods. The protocols cover the required procedures for measuring four ingredients: milk fat; milk protein; sucrose and invert sugars. These values are then read off a Meursing table, which has 32 rows for the possible combinations of the milk components and 19 columns for the sugars. The three figure codes in the tables are transferred to the customs documentation, preceded by a 7, flagging it as a special additional code.
Most third country exporters of biscuits and bakery goods face a lengthy documentation process. The UK, however, has not been required to use Meursing codes since April 2021. Not that this has stopped folk from feeling hard done by.
Comments can be entered at the foot of posts, but not pages.
![click to read Of Brexit And Dogs' Dinners](http://<!-- wp:image {"id":1815,"sizeSlug":"full","linkDestination":"none"} --> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img src="https://urbanfoodchains.uk/wp-content/uploads/scaled-dogs-dinner.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1815"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><a href="https://urbanfoodchains.uk/of-brexit-and-dogs-dinners/">Of Brexit and dogs' dinners</a></figcaption></figure> <!-- /wp:image -->){kind=link}