AHDB said it was committed to working with others in key areas, such as better use of data and the development of industry environmental standards, to deliver change that ensures farm assurance is working effectively for farmers and the wider supply chain.
In its detailed response to the Farm Assurance Review (FAR), which was published in January, the levy body says it is committed to working quickly on key recommendations, most of which will require collaborative working and hence some time.
The key areas highlighted in the report that AHDB plans to prioritise are:
- The role and purpose of assurance – Collaborating to ensure industry alignment on the role and purpose, including benefits, of particular schemes. This is vital if there is to be ongoing support for assurance from farmers.
- Red Tractor ownership – AHDB agrees the owners of Red Tractor should show greater and more active leadership, to help shape its future direction and organisational culture. AHDB is committed to working with the fellow owners to ensure delivery.
- Data – AHDB is supportive of the general direction of this recommendation as data is a major area of opportunity for the industry. However, for it to work effectively and to ‘collect it once, use many times’, solutions must be found to the control/ownership of data, creating trust, not undermining the value of data, resolving governance standards and putting in place technical standards to make things easy for farmers, it said. None of these points are exclusive to assurance. AHDB is working on these topics and will invite assurance schemes to work to develop an effective scheme.
- Environmental standards – These are not going away, and it is important that levy payers are at the table to ensure the balance between regulation or contractual minimum versus incentivisation and reward for higher standards is fair and reasonable, AHDB said. It will use its ongoing work on baselining and evidence to support the development and acceptance of wider standards (outside of farm assurance), with the clear objective that levy payers must have the potential to benefit from future standards. Whether environmental standards should be included in farm assurance or not will depend on incentives for levy payers and the role and purpose of particular assurance schemes, it addee.
AHDB CEO Graham Wilkinson said: “AHDB is fully committed to seeing change in assurance that benefits everyone. My team and I are continuing to work with the unions, having jointly funded the original report, in supporting David Llewelyn, the lead independent commissioner who will report on progress in the future.”
AHDB Chair Nicholas Saphir said: “As one of the six owners of Red Tractor, AHDB is committed to working to see genuine change that leads to the majority of members and stakeholders supporting the scheme. The AHDB board will review progress by Red Tractor in the autumn.
“We recognise that some may never support the concept of assurance, but the vast majority of all parts of the supply chain will benefit from strong assurance schemes that have clear objectives, deliver value and work effectively.”
The FAR made nine strategic recommendations and 56 detailed recommendations. AHDB expects to be involved in 20, of these either directly or in collaboration with others.
You can see a summary of AHDB’s response HERE