Devenish Nutrition executive chairman Owen Brennan spoke at the the Nuffield Farming Scholarships dinner last Thursday, stating that growing affluence was more beneficial to farming than population increase.

The growth of wealth in the global population is far more significant and beneficial to farming and the food industry than just the growth of population, Brennan told guests at the conference dinner in Belfast.

Brennan said that the effects of this have been seen in markets as wealthier people demand higher calorific intakes and more protein-based diets and that this trend would continue.

He said that in Brazil, 40 million people have moved from low-income to mid-income categories in the last five years and that the government are confident that another 40 million will move to the mid-income category over the next five years.

“I think their judgement on that is correct. Even if you took the progress of Brazil and halved it on a global basis, that would deliver 100 million each year into the mid-income categories,” he said.

Better quality

Brennan also pointed out that there will be an opportunity for an industry that can produce better quality food as there are almost three billion people worldwide who are malnourished. This figure includes approximately 700 to 800 million people who are undernourished and close to two billion who are clinically obese or overweight globally.

“It is not commonly understood that a person who is overweight at a clinical level is actually just as malnourished as a person who is underweight,” he said.

The last session of the Nuffield Farming Conference was related to beef production, and included a presentation by the only local Nuffield Scholar presenting a paper, Jonathan Birnie, head of agriculture and research for Dunbia.

During his study, he considered how change can be facilitated within the red meat chain through knowledge transfer, feedback and technology uptake.

He said that there are a lot of reasons to be optimistic about the sector, but that change is necessary, with farmers having a much greater focus on a customer, who wants consistency, value and a known quality.

“For example, over-fat lamb or overweight cattle leads to inefficiency,” said Birnie.

However, in his report he recognised that processors have a responsibility to improve the feedback of information to farmers on customer and market information. In turn, farmers must focus on what is in their power to influence or change, analyse business performance through data collection and compare with others.

He advocated the use of specialist help (external advisers) and the importance of using progressive farmers to demonstrate how they made changes to their business.

When asked about the reality of driving change within a fragmented NI beef industry, Birnie said that there will always be a proportion that advisory services can never reach. “The reality is that there are probably only 5,000 serious beef farmers in NI,” he suggested.

A recurring theme from a number of speakers and contributors at the Nuffield conference was the need to move away from the EUROP grading system and create a payment system linked to meat eating quality.

“We need to move away from EUROP, but we also need to be sure that we have something better in its place. It is not far away – in the next five years we should have a measure that can reward good eating beef,” said Jonathan Birnie.

Before that change can happen, there is requirement to educate the consumer. Marbling might improve eating quality, but the reality is that most consumers prefer to buy lean beef.

However, Birnie maintains that there has been a slight shift in consumer behaviour, with consumers starting to buy more beef with marbling.

“The industry should also try to influence more celebrity chefs about eating quality of meat,” he suggested.

His views were echoed by Rob Drysdale, a vet working in southeast England, who has completed a report into beef production from the dairy herd. Drysdale has been veterinary manager to Blade Farming.

However, his presentation might not have gone down that well at a farmer meeting. He questioned the future of the suckler cow, and talked about the use of a vertically integrated model based on the chicken industry, to produce dairy-bred beef.

One of the drivers said Drysdale was the need to think food security within the UK. He also suggested that the beef price in the UK is currently too high.