The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) has published its response to the independent UK-wide Farm Assurance Review (FAR).
AHDB said its response to the review, which was published in January, confirms its strong commitment to changes that ensure assurance is working effectively for everyone – both farmers and the wider supply chain.
The board said it is committed to working quickly on the key recommendations, most of which will require collaborative work and take some time.
There are several key areas the AHDB said it plans to prioritise:
- The role and purpose of assurance – Collaborating to ensure industry alignment on the role and purpose, including benefits, of particular schemes. AHDB said this is vital if there is to be ongoing support for assurance from farmers.
- Red Tractor ownership – AHDB said it agrees the owners of Red Tractor should show greater and more active leadership, to help shape its future direction and organisational culture. It said it is committed to working with the fellow owners to ensure delivery.
- Data – AHDB said it is supportive of the general direction of this recommendation as data is a major area of opportunity for the industry, but for it to work effectively, more solutions must be found to better manage the data, creating trust in and not undermining the value of data, and putting in place technical standards to make things easier for farmers.
- Environmental standards – 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.
Commenting on the review, AHDB chief executive Graham Wilkinson stated: “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.
“The report is applicable to all assurance schemes, but it is clear that some of the recommendations are focused specifically on Red Tractor.”
