Trade talks threaten Scottish agriculture

IN THE same week that the Scottish Council for Development and Industry is taking the largest ever trade mission to Brazil to discuss, among other issues, increasing trade in food and drink, NFU Scotland will travel today to Brussels to express opposition to reducing trade barriers with South American countries.

The next round of talks between Europe and Mercosur, comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, are due in March 2012 with an expected final agreement coming later in the summer.

However, an impact assessment on lowering trade barriers in allowing more beef and other farm produce to enter Europe has seen union leaders head for Brussels to link up with other farm leaders to lobby MEPS.

The report suggests EU agricultural producers could lose as much as €7.75 billion, a 3.21 per cent drop in revenue, if the trade deal is done.

For Scottish agriculture that would be a disaster according to union livestock policy manager Penny Johnston. “Our grassland-based beef production must not be the pawn sacrificed to secure a bilateral trade deal with the Mercosur bloc in 2012,” she said.

“This impact assessment confirms what NFUS already suspected. Food producers in the EU would suffer a fall in returns because of the deal and beef would bear the brunt as a consequence of a significant uplift in beef imports from that area.”

She believed that a deal would see production hit as well as revenues fall: “If that were to happen it would be a travesty and risk undermining the current fragile stability we see in our beef herd and the improved returns we are enjoying from the marketplace for Scotch beef.”

The report, from the EU’s joint Research Centre, comments: “It is clear that, on a per capita basis, the losses to EU agricultural producers far outweigh the gains to those accruing in EU manufacturing or to EU food consumers.”

Meanwhile, John Cameron, president of the Scottish Beef Cattle Association, will warn a major beef conference in Kentucky next week that politicians can either have a greener agriculture or they can have a more productive one, but not both.

It would be up to society generally and politicians in particular to decide which of the two options they wanted the farming industry to follow, he said.