The new regulatory body must send a strong signal that it is intent on ‘exposing margin-grabbing and delivering supply-chain transparency if it is to win the confidence of the farmer primary-producer’ according to ICMSA president, Pat McCormack.
He said that while the establishment of the office is welcome, farmers are reserving judgement for now in the hope that meaningful attention will be directed towards food-price transparency along the chain.
In announcing the new agri-food regulator, Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue said it would ‘perform a price, market analysis and reporting function to bring greater transparency all along the agricultural and food supply chain, providing regular reports on price and market information on all sectors in the agri-food supply chain’. The ICMSA president said that how this mission will be implemented will be a key first test of the regulator and will determine farmer confidence that the legislation can and will work in their interest.
Who gets what?
The ICMSA says that the new regulator should publish monthly prices received by the primary producer, the processor, the retailer, and any other actors in the supply chain in a way that takes into account the uniqueness of each food product.
As an example, the ICMSA president cited the dairy sequence where the price paid to dairy farmers and by consumers is transparent, but what the processor receives and secondary processors – such as baby-food manufacturers – is not. He said that these scenarios and the various products need to be investigated and monthly data published along the full supply chain towards answering the ultimate question: how is the final consumer price made up and who got what?
In relation to beef, he says, a farmer sells a finished animal, while the consumer purchases specific cuts. “A significant body of work will be required so that farmers can transparently see who got the value from the animal. This is the degree of transparency required,” he said.