Crops and seeds - what are we working on?
- Since the autumn, cereal and oilseed prices have been relatively stable with a number of the world’s crop producing regions reporting difficulty balancing those with high output in 2011.
- The European Commission announced the end of anti-dumping duties and quotas for liquid nitrogen fertiliser (UAN) from Algeria, Belarus, Russia and Ukraine in December 2011. This means farmers and growers will be able to benefit from a wider supply base for their future fertiliser needs. The ruling was announced by the Commission’s Directorate-General for Trade. The action followed the abandoning of potash anti-dumping measures in July 2011. The NFU led farmer lobbying activity in the EU on both these products.
- The NFU’s Guy Gagen spoke at the November Conseil d'Administration de AGPB (French cereal farmers’ union) in Paris on CAP policy, and exchanged views on lack of applied science in agriculture, the stagnation of cereal yields in UK and France, trade policy, public opinion on arable farming and industry structure and competiveness.
- Green Food Project – wheat group. Defra has set out how it plans to respond to the Natural Environment White Paper and the UK government’s Foresight Report.
The department has involved agriculture, government, retailers, processors and NGOs and established a set of aims. These include a moral obligation for England to produce and to export agricultural products and to improve the environment. There were to be six projects, two on landscapes, two on food and two on agricultural commodities, namely wheat and dairy.
Guy Gagen chairs the wheat group with support from the HGCA and Defra. It has secured agreement from a broad range of individuals in genetics, knowledge transfer, environmental improvement, crop protection and retail, and will develop a report on how to sustainably increase wheat production, to be presented to the minister in March 2012. The overall project report will be in June 2012.
- The Canadian Wheat Board will be wound-up after Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government received Royal Assent to eliminate the ‘single-desk’ monopoly in December 2011.
Since 1942, western Canadian farmers had been required by law to sell all their grain for human consumption to the board, under a system created to stabilize prices. The board’s jurisdiction covered the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and parts of British Columbia. Canada is expected to match Russia as the world’s third-largest wheat exporter in 2011/12, after the US and Australia.
The HGCA grain storage guide was updated with the latest science and best practice in October. Safe, effective grain storage is key to assuring crop quality and helping to prevent loss of premiums through claims and rejections.
First published in 1999, the guide has become a key reference for grain assurance schemes. This third edition follows a five-year, £1.3m Defra and industry-funded research project, with NFU involvement, to review the previous edition and ensure the recommendations remain robust.
- The NFU has continued worked closely with AFS on biofuels, towards the inclusion of the Red Tractor Crops and Sugar Beet scheme in an EU-wide approval process under the Renewable Energy Directive. The NFU continues to lead discussions across the UK supply chain to help ensure smooth transitions for domestic markets and export.
The NFU, with AIC and SCOPA, met the German ISCC scheme-owner in Cologne, to discuss potential for ISCC recognition of Red Tractor to avoid the need for additional audits on farm.
- The NFU, alongside AB Sugar and SCOPA, provided evidence to the DfT to highlight the inaccuracies in the current report which summarises typical greenhouse gas emissions for crop production in different regions across the UK. The DfT has accepted the representations made and have agreed to review the official report in 2012, which would make it easier to trade oilseeds produced in England and Wales.
- The Renewable Energy Directive provisions on biofuels have now been enacted in the UK. The NFU submitted a response to the DfT consultation and has participated in stakeholder meetings in December to help provide expert input into the development of the supporting carbon and sustainability guidance for the new rules.
- Ensus, one of Europe’s largest cereal bio-refinery plants processing wheat for the production of bioethanol, animal feed and CO2 for the food industry, has remained shut down since May 2011, leading to a slowing domestic demand and reduced supply of high protein animal feed. With reasonable overseas demand, wheat that might have been processed in the UK has been loaded for export.
This reduction in UK demand has been created by delays in implementation of the Renewable Energy Directive targets in both the UK and across Europe together with economic factors.
- Seeds: The NFU has submitted a response to the FERA fees review consultation relating to statutory plant health functions. We noted the failure to include potential impacts on agriculture from the proposed increases, including on plant and seed availability and cost.
In addition, the NFU co-ordinated a letter from the various industry representative bodies highlighting the need for cost-management strategies to be developed before further costs could be borne by the industry.
- The NFU is working closely with the AIC and BSPB to develop proposals for efficiency improvements in the variety registration functions under FERA, including the options to transfer functions to industry and the devolved authorities. The NFU will also be involved in meetings to further understand the seeds certification systems in the coming weeks in order to develop options.
These will be fed into FERA for its second phase of consultations, expected in February 2012, in order to counter the full transfer of costs to the industry.
- The NFU continues to work with BSPB to identify potential for improvement of the current Heads of Agreement on farm-saved seed, to ensure the system of collection remains within the boundaries of the Plant Variety Rights legislation while helping to build on the effective system of royalty collection and address any potential remaining areas of leakage in collection including winter beans and feed barley.
Promotion of the success of the UK royalty collection agreement has continued to support our lobbying on the current review of the European Plant Variety rights legislation and has gained support for ensuring new proposals do not pose any additional burdens for those countries where such a system operates. The NFU is actively involved in the development of the Copa-Cogeca position for the European review.
The NFU has updated briefings on the royalty area collection schemes being operated by some companies under BIPO (a company formed for the administration of RAC schemes) for certain oat, bean and pea varieties following questions from members received in December. The advice now includes details as currently understood on the potential for farmers subject to RACs receiving audits by NSF-CMi at the same time as a Red Tractor audit.
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