Urban Food Chains

the links between diet and power

key concept
Third country
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Despite the inference that there could be multiple options, being a third country is a binary opposite of a member state in European parlance. The possible source of ambiguity in this distinction is that there are two implied alternatives to being a third country. Between themselves, EU member states use the term third country to refer to countries which are not EU members, in much the same way a verb might be conjugated. To complete the analogy, the first person is the member state speaking, the second person refers to the other member states on an equal footing, while the third person is identified as a separate, external non-member.

Unlike other areas of European policymaking, in which a wide spectrum of buying-in is accepted without argument, the distinction between being a member state and a third country is fundamentally indivisible. The UK negotiators failed to gain any traction in their attempts to carve out a halfway quasi-membership status that might have opened the way to feathering a cuckoo’s nest of a la carte patronage for British interests. The choice of Michel Barnier to lead Brexit talks for the European Union reflected his commitment to the indivisible membership of a European community that was used to accommodating consensus policymaking in specific areas and contexts.

Brexit's legacy customs clearance haulage lorry raw
Westminster faces customs stalemate
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The Scottish parliament is accusing Westminster of intransigence over the halted building work at the Scottish car ferryport of Cairnryan. Work to build a Border Controls Post (BCP) started after getting a government green light last year. Since then, construction has ground to a halt, as Westminster has refused to give a binding commitment to fund the BCP in full.

Sailings from Stranraer were transferred to the nearby Dumfries and Galloway port of Craigryan back in 2012, for operational reasons. Wholly-owned by Larne Harbour Ltd, Craigryan is a part of the P&O landside portfolio. It can operate up to 16 sailings a day, serving destinations in Northern Ireland.

While Brexit negotiations were in progress, Westminster was committed to funding border infrastructure in full. The Scottish parliament is concerned that it may end up footing part of the bill for port infrastructure on a privately-owned facility. There are also political sensitivities about a requirement for customs facilities on what is currently an internal border.

The implementation of Sanitary and PhytoSanitary (SPS) checks that are the reason for building a BCP in the first place has not happened. Successive start dates in 2021 and 2022 were announced and cancelled: Westminster is currently planning to start SPS checks on livestock and animal products in July, although the BCP site at Cairnryan might not be operational by then.

From a commercial point of view, ferry traffic patterns have changed since Brexit, making the business case and the requirement for a BCP a moot point. The introduction of inbound SPS checks for the UK cannot be evaded forever.

dairy livestock
Between a rock and a hard place
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Hampshire tenant farmer Oliver Neagle was forced to cull 18 of his cows after water supplies to his farm were cut. The dairy farmer pays for water as part of his rent, however he endured breaks in his supply in December and February. Southern Water laid on bottled water for consumers, but had no solution to offer Neagle’s livestock. The number of lactating cows on his farm has gone down from 110 head to 82. With fewer milking cows, the business is compromised and faces harder times. You can read the BBC’s account of what happened here.

This story is an example of the sort of public interest reporting carried out by local BBC journalists that would not have had any traction for commercial broadcasters. Neagle’s story must not be allowed to go down the back of the sofa, no more than the importance of fearless public sector journalism should be undervalued or misunderstood. 

City life cultivation food production
City life 2.1
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Is the writing on the wall for hydroponics? Vertical Farming Daily reports on trials for aeroponics in an adapted hydroponics line. The new technology has to fit in with existing installations to stand a cat in hell’s chance of being considered, but rises to the challenge of producing crops faster using less water. The plug and play modification showed increased yields of just over 20% in trials organised by aeroponics developer Lettus Grow, using the firm’s Aeroponics Rolling Beds (ARB).

These replacement growing trays keep seedlings suspended in the air, receiving nutrients in a carefully controlled fine mist at fixed intervals. To eliminate any risk of blocked nozzles, the Lettus system uses ultrasonic technology to shake droplets of growing solution into the roots of the crop, generating a fine mist.

The application of the nutrient mist can be very closely controlled, keeping the growing medium dry and making the crop easier to manage. The technology is being trialled in widely varying situations. Farming family business GH Dean & Co Ltd in Kent is partnering with grower Ro-Gro in a bid to speed up the development of a new revenue stream, redefining the rate at which a return can be earned on a new agricultural activity.

HM Prison Hewell is using aeroponics to train inmates in the new techniques. As well as growing fresh food for inmates there is enough to sell outside the establishment, too. Local action group Cultivate is creating a local food network to feed communities around Newtown, Powys, while Grow It York is looking to develop food strategy with aeroponics.

Vertical farming has much to commend it. By focussing on one stage of plant development it is easy to miss one important detail, though. Since it does not complete the plants’ life cycle, it does not generate seed stock for further crops. This remains as an input in the sector’s otherwise admirable environmental credentials.

datacrumb
Poultry producers face challenging market
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Since February 2021, liveweight prices for finished chickens have risen by 11% in the UK, while chicken feed costs have risen by up to 30%. Over the same period, UK exports of poultrymeat to the EU have fallen by 25% to 208,000 tonnes, while EU shipments of poultrymeat rose by 2.3% year on year to 275,000 tonnes in calendar year 2022. UK consumers buy white chicken meat and not the dark meat on the carcase, which UK poultry producers used to export to balance demand for their output. Without an export market for the dark poultrymeat and facing competition from increased volumes of imported product, the UK poultry sector is between a rock and a hard place.

Brexit's legacy customs clearance Europe
Unfinished business
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Years after leaving the European Union, the United Kingdom is finally preparing to standardise sanitary and phytosanitary border controls for imports of animal products and plant material at the UK border. This long-running shortfall in customs procedures has been a recurring bone of contention.

Those of us with long memories will recall Boris Johnson assuring EU leaders that he had a workable solution for the Irish border. This ground-breaking declaration rapidly degenerated into despair and disillusion as it became increasingly clear that Boris had no intention of delivering any such thing.

Just in case this sounds overstated, listen to Boris Johnson’s biographer Anthony Seldon talking to Sky News about Johnson’s real Brexit agenda. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1009898093714184

This failure has been the elephant in the room haunting European relations ever since. When the UK first announced its intention of becoming a third country, France moved swiftly and decisively to implement a range of Border Inspection Post (BIP) facilities at Calais to complement those available at Dunquerque and Boulogne sur Mer. The substantial investment and recruitment drive was a prerequisite for handling third country imports of animal products and plant material from the world’s newest third country, the UK. The French government was in a position to act in a timely manner, since the state owns all the country’s port facilities, the daily management of which is delegated to local chambers of commerce.

The English situation, on the other hand, is an arbitrary mix of publicly and privately owned ports, in which the larger ones are public assets while many smaller ports are privately-owned and/or run by trusts. These routinely require government legislation to authorise investment capital, often secured against the assets and fabric of the ports concerned. This less-than-satisfactory muddle means that the government could not require some ports to release land for goods inspection facilities without first checking the local management structure(s). The UK government intends to expand its existing provision of inspection facilities along the lines of EU system, seemingly more cheaply than what the EU would charge for inspecting goods travelling in the opposite direction.

The EU has round 400 Border Inspection Posts (BIPs), later renamed Border Control Posts (BCPs). These are equipped and authorised to inspect consignments of specific livestock species and/or products derived from them. Importers need to book an appointment and plan their journey accordingly. Likewise, shipments of fish and plant material will be directed to BCPs that are equipped to inspect them. EU checks on paperwork are capped at around 45 Euros per consignment. Randomised physical inspections cost around 450 Euros for a container and are charged to the owner of the goods concerned. Regardless of any duty payable on the goods, VAT is payable on the inspection fee, as a component of import VAT. The UK government is quite clear in presenting its plans for border checks that it will retain the principle of charging for inspecting paperwork, but charge a single one-size-fits-all fee for all traffic, regardless of whether or not goods are physically checked. (link)

“It is the UK Government’s intention that there will be charging at Inland Sites to recover operating costs which are necessary to undertake physical inspections at BCPs. The UK Government will consult on its proposed methodology and rates in the coming weeks to inform charging levels. The proposal is to administer a Common User Charge on each consignment which enters through Port of Dover and Eurotunnel that is eligible for SPS checks. The charge would apply to all eligible consignments, whether or not they are selected for a BCP inspection. The indicative Common User Charge rate is estimated to be in the region of £20-£43, however final rates will be determined following consultation.”

The document does not specify a price range for physical inspections and it is not clear whether there are enough qualified vets to cover such a requirement. This light touch, combined with the government’s enthusiasm for trusted trader schemes suggests that physical inspections will be the exception rather than the rule.

The extra cost of shipping animal products into Europe as a third country has hit UK exporters, who were not warned in advance. There’s a footnote about import VAT here, by the way.

Asia fish
Stiff fines no deterrent
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Sea cucumber. Pic: public domain.

Criminals fishing for sea cucumber to the south of Japan are ignoring the increasingly harsh penalties for their coveted catch. Japanese police arrested five poachers with a 625 kg catch of sea cucumbers last week. Valued at around 10,000 pounds, the haul was one of the largest in recent years. Sea cucumber is an overfished delicacy that faces sharp declines in population if current levels of exploitation continue. Unfortunately, there is no reliable way of calculating the sustainability of surviving stocks.

food manufacture food production raw UK
Investigating hydrogen
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For the past eighty years scientists have been rolling up their sleeves at the Glensaugh research farm and finding robust answers to the problems facing the agricultural sector. Perched on the east coast of Scotland not far from Aberdeen, the site is set to become a carbon neutral farming environment once its building programme comes on stream, pencilled in for 2025.

BBC journalist Nancy Nicolson visited Glensaugh for an edition of On Your Farm, which aired on April 30 and is still available on BBC Sounds. Water is the key to the project, using an industrial scale electrolyser to generate hydrogen that will power tractors and heavy machinery. This will in turn be powered by an array of green energy sources, such as turbines and solar panels.

A headline figure for the project is four million pounds: this is explained in part by the additional cost of being early adopters of technology that is still in development. This project will cast a light on the current operational energy needs of a one thousand hectare estate. Investment on this scale in one agricultural location is based on the assumption that the rest of the national economy will still be functioning in the future, in a recognisable form. We are still a long way from converting urban centres into sustainable economic entities.

Listen to Nancy Nicolson here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001lhz1?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

food manufacture
Scale of sugar’s cornerstone role
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Modern sugar farming is potentially as bad for the planet as the food ingredient is for us. Take for example British Sugar, which buys in 8 million tonnes of sugar beet a  year and turns them into 1.2 million tonnes of sugar.

Ever since 1996, British Sugar has been developing a profitable business from a sugar beet by-product, namely the soil adhering to sugar beet arriving at the factory gate. British Sugar’s product range is marketed under the TOPSOIL brand and is sold by the lorryload to golf clubs, housing developments, parks and gardens.

pic: British Sugar

Some 3,000 farmers across the east of the UK are literally giving away their futures with every trailer load of muddy sugar beet. Nobody at British Sugar has any particular reason to worry. But the fact remains that the farmers concerned are losing 200,000 tonnes of soil a year from their core business — about 66 tonnes each per year as an average. If British Sugar was experiencing a comparable threat to its core business, it would probably respond differently.

British Sugar is the UK arm of the much larger AB Sugar group, which employs 35,000 staff at 27 locations around the world, including a Chinese sugar beet joint venture. The AB Sugar parent company is Associated British Foods, which supplies food manufacturers and retailers with an extensive range of ingredients and finished food products. ABF is the second largest processor of sugar and baker’s yeast in the world, as well as having a significant presence  in emulsifiers and stabilisers. Once a significant food retailer, its retail arm is now limited to the fashion chain Primark. This deliberate choice of non-food, avoids cannibalising the core food businesses.

Created with The GIMP

The roots of ABF go back to 1935, when Canadian Garfield Weston founded Food Investments ltd, which just weeks later became Allied Bakeries. It grew steadily through the war years and by 1956 had bought up 10 regional and national bakeries, selling 20 million biscuits a day in addition to bread.

In 2022, group profits were GBP 1.4 billion on a group revenue of GBP 17 billion. Now owned by Wittington Investments, ABF dominates the UK food sector with leading positions in key food ingredients and processes.

cultivation food production plants retail
Looking ahead
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Gaps in supply chains are set to become a regular feature of the UK economy. In April, supermarket chain Morrisons started limiting customers to two sweet peppers per shopping trip because of procurement difficulties for salad ingredients. Cold weather in southern Europe has led to shortages across the continent, while high energy costs have deterred UK growers from planting early greenhouse salad crops. Supplies of early season tomatoes and cucumbers have also been affected.

Traditional sources for these crops are Spain, Morocco and neighbouring north African countries. The combination of higher fuel costs for imported salad crops and the cold snap has wreaked havoc.

In March, the UK recorded headline Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation of 10% https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bulletins/consumerpriceinflation/march2023 But take a closer look at the Office of National Statistics data and consumers will learn that food inflation is running at around 19% (CPIH 12-month rate for March 2023). Climate disruption is just one of many factors that will have a generalised effect on future developments in many sectors. Animal products of all kinds have already been heavily impacted in recent months and the sector can be expected to see further upward pressure on prices if producers are going to stay in business.