THERE IS a huge potential threat to the cereal growing business in the UK from Brexit, growers were warned at this week’s Cereals event, in Lincolnshire.

The UK’s policy think-tank for the industry, AHDB warned that the industry ‘must not to sleepwalk into Brexit’ and that they were currently not fit to compete in global markets.

Boiled down, the UK is a small-scale exporter and a high-cost producer, which was not an ideal combination to fight for sales in what is now a global market, said the AHDB’s chief strategist, Tom Hind.

Launching the organisation’s Horizon report, ‘Post-Brexit prospects for UK grains’ he said: “Uncertainty around the detail of Brexit is no excuse for inertia. We need to start discussing what the cereals supply chain will look like in the longer term.

“Ultimately, every individual business needs to ask these questions and adapt their business and investment strategies to the coming change,” he warned.

It concludes that opportunities to compete in global feed grain markets will be limited and highly dependent on market conditions.

But, it had five key recommendations for industry to prepare for and drive change:

* Improve competitiveness, which is the best form of protection.

* Drive productivity.

* Businesses in the same supply chain can’t exist in isolation.

* Improve consistency of UK grain quality.

* Get to grips with potential grain and product niches at home and abroad.

Mr Hind said: “We started this with the intention of identifying where new market opportunities lie, but as we delved deeper, it became more and more apparent that while the demand is there, generally we are not in a situation to compete in global commodity grain markets.

“There are niches to exploit, but getting fit to compete in our own market has to be the priority.”

AHDB’s lead analyst, Jack Watts, who co-authored the report, was keen to promote ‘resilience-building steps’ into his contribution to a forum at Cereals.

As well as unveiling a ‘Brexit bucket list’ of questions growers need to ask themselves, he said: “Competitiveness and its resulting financial resilience is a key theme when it comes to embracing the challenges Brexit poses for the industry.

“Relentless cost management is a key part of building competitiveness – not simply cutting costs at all costs. AHDB can help farmers focus on competitiveness through peer-to-peer discussion and learning, facilitated by the Monitor Farm network and FarmBench benchmarking tool.”