Norfolk and Suffolk Agri-Food Industry Council

Tuesday 20th June 2023 (14.00-16.00)

Via Teams

Minutes

Welcome from the Chair

 Corrienne Peasgood, the Chair, welcomed members to the meeting.

 Paid tribute to Viv Gillespie, who had been on this Council since its inception and was a firm

advocate for education and the agri-food sector.

 Minutes of the last meeting were approved.

 Noted apologies (listed at the bottom of the minutes).

 Introduced the new CEO of New Anglia LEP, Rosanne Wijnberg.

Rosanne Wijnberg – CEO, New Anglia LEP:

 Has been with the LEP since 2018 in the function of Chief Operating Officer, executing the

LEP’s strategy in that role.

 The work of the Industry Council has been visible given its links to the LEP’s governance and

the points raised at LEP Board meetings have been noted.

 The LEP’s economic functions are expected to transfer into the two County Councils, subject to

the Norfolk and Suffolk County Deals being signed-off with Government.

 Hoping for the County Councils’ intentions to be clearer with the update they are bringing to the

LEP Board in July.

Business Intelligence: The ‘Fairness in the Food Supply Chain’ Call for Evidence from the

Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Committee

Corrienne Peasgood:

 The EFRA Committee has published a Call for Evidence on Fairness in the Food Supply

Chain. Given discussions at previous Industry Council meetings, we felt at the very least we

should be putting in a high-level response to this.

 Therefore, we wanted to focus on the following two questions today to capture feedback from

Industry Council members:

o To what extent is the UK’s food supply chain currently operating effectively and

efficiently?

o How could structural relationships between farmers and fishers, food producers and

manufacturers, handlers and distributors, retailers and consumers be improved for both

domestic and foreign foods?

 We have received the following comments from Industry Council members unable to attend the

meeting:

o Society as a whole needs to look at fair return for each component within the food

supply chain.

o The agri-food sector’s ability to invest in long-term infrastructure is a major challenge.

When you look at water infrastructure for example, with 6-year water agreements, how

can we give greater longer-term certainty and de-risk key investments that are needed

to support the sector.

o Grocery’s adjudicator code has not worked. Customer aspirations are all about driving

costs down, so supermarkets have been importing the problem away. Need to ensure

that in the long term we have equal food standards and less importing.

Martin Collison:

 Concerned with any thought that Government would look to start controlling prices, as the

reality is we have a very competitive market at the moment. Nobody drives the market.

Anything Government would do in this regard would distort the market.

 We have a standards issue, but this is not an issue unique to the UK. All of the farmers unions

across the EU are up in arms at the moment as the EU is proposing lower standards for

imports than is currently the case across the union. Some of the trade deals the UK has signed

leave the door open to this too. It is certainly not a case of we cannot compete, but it is made

much harder if it is not a level playing field. There is a real concern around the trade deal with

Australia, which will be phased in over ten years, as there will be standards, rules and

regulations that the imported meat would not have to abide by.

 The UK is moving much further ahead on carbon and environmental issues than elsewhere in

the world, you cannot implement these changes without a cost to business.

 Costs in the supply chain are more acute than what we have seen. Input costs have gone up.

Food prices on wholesale basis have gone back, so margins are very squeezed across the

supply chain.

Tim Place:

 Place UK’s costs have gone up by 30% in the last 2-3 years and the price for customers has

not gone up at all.

 Aware that lots of horticulture will leave the UK in the next few years.

 Supermarkets are very competitive.

 The costs imposed on the business are associated with the Government – including labour

(additional costs related to the seasonal agricultural workers scheme), environmental (including

the cost of water, which is huge and involves no compensation, and the cost of planning

permission for reservoirs is massive and takes two years (with no answers from the

Environment Agency). Until the Habitats Regulation removes the precautionary principle,

business cases are not taken into account.

Clarke Willis:

 Despair that we are talking about this again. There was a national Food Strategy published

from Henry Dimbleby which is a very good document and could be updated.

 The food system is completely broken. Concerned that 2 for 1 offers are still continuing. We are

growing a nation of unhealthy and obese individuals which is putting a burden on the NHS.

 It is not the retailers that are driving this, it is the consumer and their consumer choices.

 Government wants a cheap food policy.

Corrienne Peasgood:

 Noted the need to focus on consumer education.

Mike Warner:

 80% of seafood we consume as a nation is imported. 80% of the fish and shellfish we catch,

we export.

 A lot of the same restrictions – legislative and bureaucratic – apply to the seafood sector.

 The processing sector mainly exists because of those imports.

 The amount of wild produce the industry is able to land has depleted significantly.

 With all of the restrictions the sector is currently facing, they are very limited in scope.

 Other commercial marine activity (such as offshore energy, dredging, silt dumping, commercial

shipping, etc.) has impacted on the sector significantly.

 Under huge pressure from well-funded NGOs.

 Need a vote of confidence from the Government to get behind UK producers to produce food in

a way that supports the sector and the communities that enable it.

Martin Collison:

 The global figures show that growing a lettuce in Norfolk uses 1/7th of the amount of water

required for those grown in Spain. From a climate change perspective, similar figures can be

shown for produce we air freight in to the country. The carbon footprint is seven times if you air

freight something into the UK from Kenya, rather than if you produced it here.

 We need transparency across the supply chain if we all believe the end goal of Net Zero truly

counts rather than simply focusing on the lowest cost.

Tim Place:

 From a consumer education perspective, labelling simply makes no difference with consumers.

People are driven by price at the end of the day.

Kate de Vries:

 Government should allow the sector to charge the cost of production and then help the

community to support the lowest paid.

Mark Nicholas:

 A national Food Strategy was written and then put on the shelf. For those wishing to improve

diet, health and nutrition, these elements have not gone anywhere at all.

 The Food and Farming Discovery Trust has a very strong desire to explain more about

sustainable farming, what this looks like and the implications.

 Water is at the forefront of people’s minds.

 There is some nervousness across the industry about what is coming down the line.

Lynsey Wilson:

 New T-Levels will teach where food is coming from so Suffolk New College will be reaching out

to enhance their understanding.

Clarke Willis:

 Lost a third of sows in Eastern counties in the last two years. Danish Crown (who used to own

Tulip, which has been sold to Pilgrim) are building a £1m plant in Rochdale. They will import

pigs from Denmark to process into bacon, etc. Legislation means they can use stools for sows,

where we cannot. Because this meat will be processed in the UK, they will be able to label it as

British. Cannot see us having outdoor pigs in this part of the country for the next decade and

then the knock-on effect will mean that we will not have the consumers for wheat to feed them.

Tim Place:

 Struggling to get returnees to come back. Takes 3-4 weeks to get new starters up to speed.

Used to be an operator to bring people back, but Government changes have affected this. With

permanent staff, had to raise wages and holidays quite considerably.

 Seeking technical managers and other senior posts, which they are unable to recruit for. Very

difficult at the moment.

Martin Collison:

 In 2004, had Lord Rooker in the region after Sow tether ban. Lost 50% of pig output in the UK.

Simply began to import instead. If you put costs up here, but not on imports, you simply reduce

your sector and drive-up competitiveness elsewhere.

Industrial Decarbonisation Workshop – Lisa Roberts, Nicolette Jeffreys & Naresh Pandit

Lisa Roberts

 New Anglia LEP secured funding from the Norfolk Investment Fund (NIF) for the Agri-Food

Industrial Decarbonisation project.

 Nicky has now been in post for two weeks and has hit the ground running.

 For this workshop, we are joined by Naresh and Usha from UEA and Chris and Phoebe from

Innovate UK KTN.

 Industrial decarbonisation will play an important role in achieving our clean growth ambitions

and plays directly into Government’s Net Zero Strategy.

 At the LEP we are pursuing various opportunities:

o Partnering with a private funding opportunity, which hopefully we can share more

information on soon.

o At the beginning of June, Government launched the Local Industrial Decarbonisation

Plans competition in partnership with Innovate UK. This will support the development of

credible strategic plans for industrial decarbonisation in locally dispersed clusters and to

build capacity. We are leading on a consortium bid with a range of partners from across

industry, academia, and local government. The bid is likely to cover Norfolk, Suffolk,

Essex and Cambridgeshire. We will seek the Industry Council’s input on this in due

course and keep members updated.

o The NIF-funded Agri-Food Industrial Decarbonisation project, which runs to the end of

March 2024, will build a Norfolk-wide roadmap and will support the sector to develop

their Net Zero credentials through learning, peer-to-peer networking, and support for

decarbonisation planning. Want to diffuse innovation across our local economy. This

will inform the larger-scale place-based bid to the Local Industrial Decarbonisation Plan

bid at the beginning of August.

Naresh Pandit, UEA:

 The headlines of the recent research project led by UEA’s Norwich Business School (for New

Anglia LEP) looked at best practice and barriers to decarbonisation amongst Norfolk and

Suffolk firms.

 The data was collected through an online questionnaire and focus groups (such as this

Industry Council last year).

 Carbon measurement and Net Zero planning are in their infancy. One-third of respondents are

measuring carbon frequently. Only one-fifth have a Net Zero strategy.

 Businesses are overwhelmed by the size of the challenge, with some struggling to deal with

Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. Completely overwhelmed by Scope 3 emissions (covering

upstream and downstream in supply chains).

 Businesses need access to information – know-how and support. What motivates businesses

across Norfolk and Suffolk is when the business benefits are clear and strong. Need to draw

out the links stronger between decarbonisation and profitability, risk management, corporate

social responsibility, etc. Furthermore, businesses across the cluster need to be on the sme

page.

 Businesses are relatively uncertain over where to turn to for support given there are lots of

sources of support, of varying quality, and there needs to be coordination over local support on

offer. This is even more important for SMEs.

 Businesses that have integrated Net Zero planning as part of their overall strategy are

exemplars.

Questions for Industry Council members to consider:

o What does successful decarbonisation in the Agri-food sector look like to you?

o What are the challenges and opportunities to achieving this?

Corrienne Peasgood:

 What did the research bring out on the cost of not doing anything and the cost to businesses of

not acting? This could inform our communications to businesses if we better understand this.

 Naresh response – received information from businesses when they were genuinely

overwhelmed coming out of Covid-19 with rising costs and this was seen as another item on

the agenda when they were struggling to remain as businesses.

Jerry White:

 This region has an opportunity to be at the forefront of certain elements of this agenda when it

comes to skills and training. Need to produce something coherent for the region.

Tim Place:

 Soft fruit member of cooperative has a calculator which is working.

 Supermarkets are driving the agenda on this.

 As a business, want to cut down and save on energy costs – grid connections are the problem.

Going to put solar in and would like to put wind on site, but not sure planning will be possible.

Asked whether there are any compensatory measures for businesses.

Martin Collison:

 Doing some work for DG SANTE at the European Commission and working with huge global

food companies. They are getting good control of Scope 1 and 2 emissions, but Scope 3 really

concerns them.

 The easiest way for Norfolk and Suffolk to reduce carbon associated with the food chain would

be to not produce any food at all. But that is not right, and we must be transparent about the

carbon associated with food imported into the UK.

 Rewilding, which is popular, can have unintended consequences as it reduces land associated

with food production and in turn drives up more imports and could actually lead to an increased

carbon footprint.

 There is so much more we can do around fertiliser and soils. The University of East Anglia and

partners on Norwich Research Park have huge expertise in this area. We have world-class

expertise in peas and beans, and we could use this to reduce imports and use it as a transition

crop to reduce fertiliser.

 Seeing lots of businesses wake up to this in the last 12 months due to rising energy costs.

Clarke Willis:

 Invited the team leading this work to the Food Enterprise Park. It is a private network, which

means that the power supply can be manipulated for everyone on site. Planning for 100MW of

solar and wishful thinking around wind but cannot connect to the grid for export capacity. From

1st April, 100% renewable electricity on the Food Enterprise Park.

 With Norfolk Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group hat on, spending a vast amount of time on

biodiversity net gain, land management and nature recovery conversations. These are all of the

buzz words, and not food production. Using carbon calculators and baseline levels. Fertiliser,

diesel, and agricultural chemicals are the biggest emitters.

Greg Smith:

 We must think about what people want and need to have in their diets in the future and make a

generational shift.

 From a skills perspective, we must equally think about generational renewal. These issues are

very alive, and we need to amplify them.

 Interested in the market around carbon calculating and carbon trading.

 If we want to do something locally, there are channels and networks. We must use exemplars

who are looked upto in the region and use their activities as a show and tell.

Martin Collison:

 Big carbon schemes have collapsed – the offsetting world is a difficult place to be. Working

with a 5,000-acre estate somewhere else in the country and nobody knows what the

comparability is between accounting systems, how the rules work, what you are and are not

allowed to claim, etc. There needs to be a lot more work and auditing systems in place to

remove greenwashing out of the system and ensure there is a workable solution across the

whole supply chain.

 There are currently around 90 carbon calculators in the agri-food sector alone, not a way to

support an efficient marketplace.

 Andy Wood has been on this agenda for many years at Adnams, so it is definitely worth using

them as an exemplar if not already.

Usha Sundaram:

 When conducting the research and speaking to sectors in-depth, the sense was that there is a

lack of balance around the shaping of the decarbonisation agenda. The repeated use of

decarbonisation implied to some that the sector was ‘dirty’, when it is playing a fundamentally

important role in feeding people.

Lisa Roberts:

 Keen to also support this agenda through Skills Bootcamps. Government has approved the

next round of funding and keen to shape the courses with this grant funding to meet the needs

of business.

 In terms of next steps, we will communicate with the Industry Council and other partners

providing progress updates. Do reach out in the meantime if you have any questions or

additional input.

State of the Nation - All

Mark Nicholas:

 Have two lively agricultural associations that are well-placed to join dots and move debates

forward.

 You will have received an invitation from James to the Norfolk Futures event at the Royal

Norfolk Show next week which will lead to a white paper on what the next generation expects

from the current generation. The skills stand will look at biodiversity and showcase the

transition to Net Zero.

 The funding dried up last year from the County Councils and the LEP for the Skills and Careers

Festival. We must ensure this is underwritten moving forwards to maintain delivery.

Mike Warner:

 With a regional and seasonal promotional British food hat on, the more we can do to stem the

tide of low-welfare and cheaper imports will be beneficial. It will also impact directly on our

ability to decarbonise as a country.

Kate De Vries:

 Holding an event on 12 October with Norfolk Constabulary, Agri-Tech E and the Police and

Crime Commissioner around Rural Crime. Keen to hear from anyone regarding case studies

where technology has been used to reduce crime.

James Williamson:

 Working closely with food processing and manufacturing companies in the region.

 Have been working with Lisa’s team around the industrial decarbonisation agenda to ensure

these businesses are kept in the loop and benefitting from this work.

 Confidence in the sector is pretty low in the region at this moment.

Greg Smith:

 The Agri-Food Skills Group is alive and well. Held a good meeting a few weeks’ ago at Poultec.

 Discussions focus on the here and now (current insights, Bootcamps, T-Levels, etc.) and

where we go with the transition (consensus is that the skills group is important on a regional

basis).

 Land-based T-Levels need input and support to help them mature.

 The Local Skills Improvement Plan has gone into the Department for Education. Hopefully this

will unlock the 2-year Skills Improvement Fund with agri-tech a key theme. Partners seem keen

for the Agri-Food Skills Group to be the group leading on that theme, which is positive.

Lynsey Wilson:

 Running a Horticulture Skills Bootcamp in September. Do reach out with any questions and

please do signpost this to others.

Any Other Business (Chair)

 Between now and the next meeting, several of the Industry Council members’ terms of

reference have expired. James will reach out for members to renew. We will also circulate

vacancies for industry council positions. If you can please make some recommendations so

that we have a pool of people we can reach out to, that would be great.

 12 September is the next Industry Council meeting in the diary – cannot chair this meeting, so

will either have to find a new Chair or re-arrange.

In Attendance

Corrienne Peasgood (Chair); Martin Collison, Collison and Associates; Greg Smith, Agri-Food Skills

Group; Kate de Vries, Norfolk County Council; Mark Nicholas, Royal Norfolk Agricultural Association;

Mike Warner, REAF; Tim Place, Place UK; Jerry White, City College Norwich; Lynsey Wilson, Suffolk

New College; Clarke Willis, Food Enterprise Park; James Allen, Rosanne Wijnberg, Lisa Roberts &

Nicolette Jeffreys, New Anglia LEP; James Williamson, NAAME; Naresh Pandit and Usha

Sundaram, University of East Anglia; Chris Hill and Phoebe Machin, Innovate UK KTN; and Diego

Durantini, Agri-TechE.

Apologies for absence

Cath Crowther, CLA; Adrian Dyter, Muntons; Charles Hesketh, NFU; Andrew Francis, Team Ag(UK);

Sam Fairs, Hillfairs Farming Ltd; Philip Ainsworth, Suffolk Agricultural Association; Rosie Begg,

Gorgate Ltd; Matt Jones, Suffolk County Council; Alexander Larter, Broadland Food Innovation Centre;

Belinda Clarke, Agri-TechE; Ben Turner, Ben Burgess and Co Ltd; and Jonathan Clarke, JIC.