Agribusiness News November 2022

Welcome to the November edition of Agribusiness News.  If you prefer to download this document as a pdf then click here

News In Brief

Cost-of-living Crisis Dominates Markets

A year ago, on the eve of COP26, the eyes of the world were on Scotland.   With a degree of irony, world leaders flew in seeking to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.  Roll forward a year, and while the hope is that COP27 will be the turning point where ‘the world came together and demonstrated the requisite political will to take on the climate challenge through concerted, collaborative and impactful action’, the eyes of the world are more inwardly focused as the cost-of-living crisis across the globe starts to bite – hard.  For many, the thinking will not be about turning down their heating to save the planet, it will be if they can afford to have any heating at all.

With all agricultural sectors battling the alignment of the now well documented cascading crises of Brexit, Covid, and the profound impact on national and global economy due to the invasion of The Ukraine by Russia; the fourth horsemen of the apocalypse in the form of Avian Flu is threatening to gallop through the poultry sector.  However, as our Talking Turkey article highlights, the UK’s love of a traditional Christmas should provide much needed support for the industry (although early ordering is advised to avoid disappointment!)

With the recent political turmoil and its effect on the economy, our beef sector article highlights the impact of food inflation on our domestic markets while our sheep article highlights the importance of sterling exchange rates on our ability to compete on the global stage.  Our guest article this month from Dr Maria Carvalho, Nat West’s Head of Climate Economics & Data explains the complexities of getting the economics right to achieve a sustainable food system.

With the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) on the horizon, this month’s article on nature conservation highlights how farmers, crofters and producers can access support funding to help achieve COP15 vision of ‘living in harmony with nature’ – a nice positive sentiment to end on…

Next month:

COP 27 Update

Key economic data –

This month’s editor – Christine Beaton