With the failure to conclude the EU-Canada trade deal dominating the airwaves this weekend, it would be easy to overlook the noises about others looking for access to the valued EU market for agricultural produce.

The French president appeared to pour cold water on TTIP, the proposed deal with the US. This is the second time in recent months that the French have been dismissive of the proposal.

The one that Irish farmers, in particular beef producers, have to watch more than all is the engagement with Mercosur, the group of South American agricultural superpowers that currently produce beef at the equivalent of €2.60/kg for R3 type cattle.

The general feeling in Brussels is that, after Brexit, there is little enthusiasm for issues that will prove divisive in the EU. Serious divisions emerged in the spring when DG Trade enthusiastically embraced the idea of restarting trade talks with Mercosur following the election of a free market-oriented president in Argentina at the end of last year.

Initial offer

When they floated the notion that Europe should include a 78,000t beef quota in the initial offer, half the member states objected and, rather embarrassingly for European Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmström, no beef offer was included in the initial offer.

The first formal round of discussions took place in Brussels the week before last and it passed without much notice. There was a more striking South American presence in Brussels this week in the form of the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency, which held a conference extolling the credentials of Brazilian agriculture to an EU audience.

The Brazilians, more than any of the other countries, were incensed at the removal of a beef quota in the initial EU offer to Mercosur, tabled in May of this year. They were demanding a 150,000t quota, which would be a third of Ireland’s total exports.

It was clear from the various Brazilian agency and government presentations that much progress has been made in Brazilian welfare, environmental and traceability standards in recent years. Slash-and-burn agriculture in the Amazon rainforest seems to have been well curtailed. However, in such a vast country, it will always be difficult to verify.

The clear message from the Brazilians in Brussels this week was that they were the obvious choice as an international trading partner of sustainable food production

When the Irish Farmers Journal posed the question on the extent of individual animal traceability, we learned that it is confined to the last 90 days of the animal’s life. Lifetime traceability in Ireland and the UK has historically been driven by disease eradication programmes and driven further by BSE in the 1990s. It isn’t the be-all and end-all of beef cattle rearing, but is a neat example of just how standards differ in various parts of the world. Individual animal traceability is rare in the US, for example, as well.

The clear message from the Brazilians in Brussels this week was that they were the obvious choice as an international trading partner of sustainable food production. They cited huge productivity improvements without adding land to the production system. Despite the advances of the last decade, it remains a largely underdeveloped agricultural producing country.

Potential

Their potential is incredible and they moved last year from entering the Chinese market in the middle of the year to being the main supplier by the year end. This year they have resumed trade with the US and are expected to swallow the entire 64,000t quota that Ireland had been supplying under and send several more thousand tonnes into the US with tariff paid.

Even if all the shackles associated with farming in the EU were off, Ireland simply couldn’t compete with this. However, we do have advantages in a specialised suckler beef product based on steer as opposed to bull beef. It is predominantly a grazed grass-fed product with more traceability information than we have on the human population.

We will reduce our carbon footprint, and our family farm structure will always trump factory farmed feedlots in any marketing campaign. However, our product cannot be cheap and we cannot survive a head-to-head battle with South American beef on the EU market.