The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) has published its three year ‘Inspiring Success’ corporate strategy aimed at ‘creating a world-class food and farming industry’.The strategies for AHDB Pork and AHDB Beef and Lamb focus on creating best value for levy payers.Key areas of the Beef and Lamb strategy include improving production consistency and competitiveness to deliver a more consistent carcase; increasing consumer demand through a focus on export and market development activities; and enhancing meat quality by rolling out a ‘Quality Standard Mark Plus Scheme’ to the supply chain.
AHDB Beef and Lamb chair, Adam Quinney, commented: “The sector is heading into unchartered waters around markets in the wake of Brexit with little indication of what might happen to farm support after 2020.“With smaller, more traditional family farms at the heart of the industry, helping ensure the sector remains sustainable was at the forefront of the board’s thinking. We were determined to look long and hard at where levies could add best value for farmers and processors and have the most impact on returns longer term,” he continued.“Our proposed domestic marketing spend is looking to capitalise on working with others in the industry over the longer term to get the best impact and return for levy funding, and making the best use of the great digital and creative skills which have been brought in-house at AHDB.“The Beef and Lamb board is absolutely determined to ensure it uses those funds carefully to enhance the sustainability of the beef and lamb sectors and exploit the opportunities which will inevitably present themselves over the next three years.”
Meanwhile, AHDB Pork has outlined two underpinning themes of its strategy: closing the productivity gap between English and EU pig producers, and focusing on pork as a midweek meal solution.Meryl Ward, AHDB Pork chair, said: “The AHDB strategy is clearly focused on where the levy can add best value collectively for levy payers, with smarter working in conjunction with industry partners, funding groups and research consortia and tapping into cross sector expertise in AHDB. Data collection and management will be critical to benchmarking and measuring progress.“Our new strategy looks at how we can make best use of the €2 million funding for the Pig Innovation Group funding being co-ordinated through AHDB. This will enable us to learn best practice and adopt the brightest ideas from Europe,” she said.The 2017-2020 strategy is now out for a six week consultation. The closing date for the consultation is 9
th January 2017.Pork, beef and lamb levy rates for 2017/2018 remain unchanged.To view the strategy click
here.This story was originally published on a previous version of the Meat Management website and so there may be some missing images and formatting issues.
