Agribusiness News December 2022

Welcome to the December edition of Agribusiness News.  If you prefer to download this document click the download button.

News in brief

COP27 spotlights on food & energy security

The political boat in Westminster may have finally steadied, after months of turmoil, but inflation continues to batter both households and businesses. The mild autumn will have come as a blessing to many and helped to keep down costs so far, but all farm businesses will inevitably be seeing rising costs and be considering ways to make efficiency savings.

Last month’s Agribusiness News highlighted the impact of Avian Flu on supply of turkeys for this Christmas, and this month’s includes a summary of the ongoing challenges facing the pig sector, linked to feed and energy prices and supply chain constraints. Now that we are going into housing time for livestock, tight supply of cereals will become more apparent. Sectors with sufficient export markets, such as the beef and lamb sector, may have more resilience, particularly as a weakened pound continues to make the UK an attractive place to buy from.

Meanwhile, the international climate change summit, COP27, was held in Sharm el-Sheikh, with a large focus on the impact of the energy crisis on climate change targets and how to ensure progress towards green transition while maintaining energy security. The other main attention was on developing countries & adaptation to climate change, which may seem far removed from Scottish farming, but there are some useful lessons to take from this. Adaptation will be crucial for farm business resilience in the face of a changing climate. While Scotland may not be faced with the same heatwaves as other parts of Europe with global temperature rise, more extreme rain, flooding and incidence of drought is likely to become more common. These provide real challenges for Scottish farm businesses. Adaptation has been a secondary consideration to mitigation (emissions reduction) in agriculture, but as it becomes increasingly relevant it would be wise for farmers to consider the co-benefits of adaptation options with evolving environmental payments, what the risks might look like to their farm, and if there are easy or low-cost ways to factor this into activities or investments now.

Next month:

• Update on global trends
  
• 2022 year in review & outlook for 2023

Key economic data – 

This month’s editor: Anna Sellars