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Sometimes you can’t help but wonder if there is ever going to be an end to this Brexit mess. It really is one of the most remarkable times in agricultural circles for generations.
Aside from this pantomime, life must go on, but it is difficult to make long-term business decisions given all the uncertainty.
However, the egg industry at the moment is generally in a good place, with steady prices being paid, and packers requiring more volume on two fronts – to meet pre-Christmas demand, and to stockpile some product ahead of the latest Brexit deadline of 31 January 2020.
I have been speaking a lot recently with potential new entrants to the industry, and farmers who want to build new units and have applied for planning. I can’t help but feel sorry for anyone looking to move into the industry or expand their business.
The non-functioning Stormont government is not helping the situation, and it effectively means there is no direction on how a typical farmer can work to reduce their ammonia levels and still make their business profitable.
With planning officials recently tightening the rules around ammonia, new planning applicants, whether poultry, pigs or dairy, will find themselves not meeting the criteria for an application to be assessed (and out of pocket for application fees).
This is a worrying situation, especially as our produce is some of the best produced, quality, traceable food in the world.
Will this new onus on lowering emissions levels in NI counteract the progress we have made over the last decade or so, and help to push cheap untraceable imports onto the marketplace?
With the need for more food year on year to feed our growing population, surely the way forward should involve dialogue with farmers and science-based studies on how to lower emissions.
Suddenly changing rules or legislation may halt new entrants, or restrain expansion, but it stops industry progress, while at the same time the underlying issues remain.
I believe new green technology, education on practices, and schemes which benefit the farmer are the way forward, not a simple industry-wide block on new sheds.
Contracts
Over the last few months, I have also been lobbying hard for NI egg producers, who felt they were being treated very unfairly by some packers.
Work is under way to determine the fairness of free-range egg contracts, with the British Free Range Egg Producers Association (BFREPA) asking farmers to send in their contracts with a view to drawing up a model arrangement between producers and packers.
In some cases, the packers will buy the egg product but then determine what price they return to the producer, as they have control over the pullet price, feed and grading of that egg. All these variables which the packer controls are in their favour.
In addition, many contracts are structured with no relation to input cost, potentially leaving farmers vulnerable when the price of feed (by far the biggest expense for poultry producers) goes up.
Contracts need to be index linked to feed costs. Also, the length of contracts, as well as the terms surrounding their termination, are under review.
Supply contracts are the foundation of most free-range egg businesses, but it is alarming to see so many examples with no reference to what farmers will actually get paid.
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