Do you want to know more about the food you’ll be eating this Christmas?

Written by Max Stoner, Enterprise Account Manager at AgriWebb

There’s a story my family likes to recite each Christmas. It is, if you like, enshrined in our family Christmas folklore. Like all good tales it grows taller with embellishment and the facts become fuzzier as time passes from the original event. What I can tell you is it features a cuddly, uneaten goose named Molly, a shambolic elder sister and a hurried, last minute trip to a chain convenience store to salvage Christmas dinner. That was 2006 and this year, at least to me, the tale has acquired a new relevance and meaning, as I view it through the prism of today’s world. 

Traceability was the driving force behind the decision to eat Molly that Christmas, but at the time I wouldn’t have considered it so. My vegetarian sister’s contention - that she could eat geese because Molly was a personal friend - I found both bafflingly and hypocritical, although now I recognise her as a trailblazing ‘flexitarian’ - an eating choice many millions of people identify with 15 years later. Flexitarian is a rather nebulous term, seeing as few people consume an exclusively meat based diet! Simply adding a gherkin to your burger isn’t enough to qualify I’m told, but I quite like AHDB's description as “a group that look to limit their meat consumption... and typically enjoy meat and dairy, but require reassurance around health, environment and welfare.” 

My sister was certainly looking for reassurance to embark on a guilt-free meat-based meal that Christmas, and sought to earn it by personally witnessing the loving and ethical conditions of Molly’s habitation. 

Now the average consumer, whatever their dietary classification, doesn’t always have such a luxury. We rely on a combination of our own knowledge – which could be variable; perhaps understanding meat productions’ contribution to carbon emissions but failing to recognise the high CO2 impact that 'vegan marketed foods’ such as soy and imported vegetables could have – along with the labels emblazoned on our food packaging. Nutritional traffic lights and labels like ‘organic’, ‘fairtrade’, ‘red tracker’ are increasingly motivating consumers' choices, but as noted by Christopher Cramer, professor of the Political Economy of Development at SOAS, their proliferation has also created an environment where "Customers have every right to be utterly confused"

Personally, I’m fairly certain I’m not having the wool completely pulled over my eyes when I buy exorbitantly priced free range eggs from my local delicatessen, but I have felt stupid when my girlfriend asked why I have paid a similar price for ‘Gluten free water’ – which of course never featured wheat in the first place. It’s a minefield to navigate and one made more problematic by a lack of unified standards, as well as imperfect data throughout the lifecycle of food products. Of course it's important for perfect to not be the enemy of good in the area of food transparency, and some labelling is undoubtedly better than none at all. But perhaps what’s most fascinating to me from my seat at the table as an “Ag Tech Guy” are that these trends are impacting the end-to-end supply chain, with demand for transparency driving innovation.

 The UK beef industry is a great example of where changing consumer demands and sustainability concerns are fostering exciting changes and innovations. You’ve probably read about synthetic burgers and reduced meat products as a solution for us all to continue to eat some of our best loved foods, but the beef industry is also confident that it can be part of the solution.

Two great examples to share here are the use of specialised genetics aimed at increasing feed conversion and reducing the time to slaughter, and regenerative grazing practices that encourage carbon sequestration. 

The UK company Genus partners with UK farmers and processors providing a range of animal genetic solutions that ‘help producers meet the increased demands for affordable, nutritious food for all, using fewer resources of water, energy and land, at a fraction of the greenhouse gas emissions of alternative systems’. Beef on dairy breeding, where low genetic/productive dairy cows are inseminated with beef semen , can increase selection intensity for best performing sires. The results of this data-driven breeding approach has proven to help reduce methane emissions up to 40% whilst also delivering farmers returns of £100 per head – demonstrating that sustainability and profitability can go hand in hand. 

 Adaptive multi paddock (AMP) grazing; where small areas are grazed with a high density of livestock for short periods of time and then left to restore themselves, can actually help in capturing carbon and increasing nitrogen soil retention. Recent studies by one of our customers Fai Farms are also proving that a sustainable approach can be a profitable one – with beef cattle reported to be achieving a lifetime daily live weight gain (DLWG) of 1.4kg, with 50% of livestock finished off grass before 20 months (thus reducing production time and cost).

 Given that UK Beef farmers boast 50% lower greenhouse gas emissions than the global average, it’s very possible that by leveraging further innovation UK beef supply could become not only net neutral but carbon negative. This would not only satisfy consumer demand for greater environmental assurances, but also further profitability (both in respect to reduced production times, as well creating a premium product that could be sold for a higher price). 

 Of course, when it comes to assurances, we also come back to how to prove it. The recent Cop26 conference gave us a glimpse of the future with a menu featuring CO2 labels (which lead to headlines croissant-has-higher-carbon-footprint-than-bacon-roll ) whilst retailers are hoping to launch eco traffic light labels in 2022. However, one of the limiting factors both to producing food that is both environmentally and financially sustainable as well as delivering the data to prove it (and this counts for all areas of food production) is the fact that farming remains one of the least digitised industries .

 Poor connectivity has been a significant contributing factor in this area and, although improving, this persists as a barrier to adoption for certain technologies. However, for simple digital record capture that can be surfaced through the supply chain – creating a life cycle journey and enabling insights for farmers and the wider ecosystem – many tools exist, including those that work offline. The farm management software and supply chain solutions provided by the company I work for, AgriWebb , are examples of such services and we’re already working with hundreds of UK farmers, as well as leading supply chains, processors and retailers to capture data sets (such as weights, treatments, feed and grazing records) that both deliver insights to drive sustainability practices and can be surfaced to provide consumers the transparency and reassurances they are increasingly demanding.

 The world in 2021 is certainly one richer with data on food provenance than that of the time of the Christmas Goose tale. The information provided might remain confusing, either because of imperfect data or by the design of canny marketers. Whilst it remains opaque, we can decide as individuals to improve our education of our areas of interest and in the realm of sustainability perhaps we could argue we have collective responsibility to do so. Increasingly, the head winds of change – driven by increased awareness of food production, what we put in our bodies and global environmental perils – will reduce the need to go as far as my sister did for assurances, as traceability keeps pace with demands. For farmers, processors and retailers, the opportunity to cater for these demands, increase their profits and differentiate themselves, is one that can be grasped – but only if greater focus is placed on capturing data and embracing digitisation. 

 As for my family’s Christmas this year, we shan’t be eating geese, or trusting my sister to procure the day’s lunch; wearing as she still does the ignominy of turning up all those years ago with Molly; apologetic, bedragelled and 6 hours late after some extended winter solstice party in Glastonbury. We shall make a conscious effort however to understand, as best we can, where  our food came from and ensure it’s as ethically and sustainably produced as a traditional Christmas lunch can be. This will be preferable to 15 years ago; when we were forced to tuck into to our substitute frozen turkey slices (unlikely to be responsibly produced or lovingly reared), eyes like daggers at my sister for her admirable, yet failed attempts, for us to enjoy a lunch with assurances of where our food came from.