Memorandum submitted by The Sheep Trust
1. We are responding as Trustees of a national
charity, The Sheep Trust, to the open invitation to send evidence
to the Select Committee for their inquiry into non-food uses of
crops.
2. The Sheep Trust evolved from Heritage
GeneBank (HGB), an organisation established during the Foot and
Mouth Disease (FMD) epidemic of 2001, to conserve genetic resources
of native sheep breeds at threat of extinction from the disease.
The academic researchers involved in the HGB initiative made the
commitment to continue their focus on using science to help sheep
breeds and the rural communities involved in their breeding, achieve
sustainability.
3. The context within which we are writing
to the Committee concerns wool. Wool is recognised as a crop of
the agricultural industry and indeed, is the subject of an ongoing
case study by the Government-Industry Forum on Non-Food Uses of
Crops. Through The Sheep Trust's grass-root interactions with
sheep farmers, particularly those of our Heritage regional and
hill breeds, we have become aware of significant and urgent issues
facing wool producers in the UK.
4. If producers farm more than four sheep,
they are required by law to send their fleece to the British Wool
Marketing Board (BWMB). This Board has a monopoly on taking all
wool production in the UK (with the exception of some numerically
scarce breeds and wool for direct export by the producer). BWMB
has the responsibility for marketing that wool and providing returns
to the producers. These returns to producers for many native hill
breeds, including our Heritage breeds such as the Swaledales and
Herdwicks, do not even cover the costs of shearing the sheep.
Increasingly, wool is regarded as a waste product of the meat
industry.
5. At a time when local and regional initiatives
are recommended by Government as a key means to regenerate the
rural economy, we believe the current situation is most unhelpful,
hinders progress and actually blocks entrepreneurial spirit in
the farming community. It is for this reason we believe it is
essential that the Select Committee brings these issues within
its inquiry: major economic opportunities to revitalise the countryside
are being lost and morale amongst producers has fallen to critical
levels.
6. It seems an extraordinary situation that
wool producers do not have any right to develop alternative uses
for their own fleeces. Rather, they must hand these over to the
BWMB, even though the Board's activities can yield as little at
1p/Kg in returns to those producers for certain hill breeds' fleece.
Some hill farmers are already taking action by simply burning
fleece rather than having to pay the additional cost of packaging
the wool and sending it to the BWMB when eventual payment is so
low.
7. What is so frustrating is that there
are new opportunities opening up for wool—in particular
for the hill breed fleece—but potential entrepreneurs in
the local communities cannot realise this potential fully since
they cannot use the very wool their own flocks produce!
8. These opportunities include, for example:
— Traditional uses for woven products
(eg rugs and garments) but produced in local centres, providing
jobs within farming communities and branding associated with the
locality: Herdwick—Lake District; Swaledale—North
York Moors; Dalesbred—Yorkshire Dales; and so on.
— Alternative, novel and large-scale
uses for non-woven products (eg insulation material—substituting
wool fibre for glass wool; industrial matting for large-scale
planting—such as the North American Greens Product, but
substituting wool fibre for coconut fibre (coir)).
— Local enterprise in Cumbria has
already established "Thermafleece", an insulation material
capable of using local hill fleece.
9. As new market opportunities become available,
surely the wool industry needs to be flexible to respond to the
opportunities and drive rural innovation? The UK produces a wide
range of fleece qualities—different wool can be used for
different applications and could readily be handled regionally/locally
for different traditional and alternative products.
10. We ask the Committee's inquiry to investigate
the potential for introducing change in the UK wool industry.
At the very least, farmers should be given a chance to cover their
costs and benefit from their own innovation and entrepreneurial
actions. If BWMB cannot market/sell the product to an agreed return,
release the current constraints and allow the producer to develop
new opportunities with higher returns than they would get from
the Board.
11. We are happy to provide further detailed
information for the inquiry, should this be necessary.
2 April 2003
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