Farming and Climate Change Measuring Success
well good afternoon everyone i’m david
potts the chief executive
of morrisons i’m very pleased to have
been asked by the sustainable food trust
to give a view from the retailer’s
perspective
retailer is of course the sharp end it’s
where millions of customers each week
give their feedback
and exert enormous influence on the
british food
industry they do this by deciding
how and where and when to spend
their hard-earned cash plans policies
and products made in boardrooms
select committees farms and factories
across the uk
get voted on every day and in every
store
and as mike tyson said everyone has a
plan
until they get punched in the mouth
morrison’s has around 500 supermarkets
in britain
we’ve a large and growing online
business and we’re a wholesaler too
as britain’s biggest food maker we have
a different relationship with british
food
and british farming than other than
other retailers
we have 20 food manufacturing sites
across the country
from abattoirs fruit and vegetable
packing
to fish flowers bread and eggs
in other words we don’t just sell food
we make it too
in addition we’re british farming’s
biggest
single supermarket customer
and we feel that responsibility the
responsibility of shaping a sustainable
relationship
between farmer retailer and customers
retailers often talk about choice and
for a supermarket customer
choice often means the balance between
price
and quality or price and provenance
or price and healthier ingredients
or price and many other factors but
price is always there
and we must never forget that and for
some time now there have been
other choices that customers have been
able to make too
for example organic free range corn fed
or reduced salt sugar and fat
these all enable customers to choose
very precisely
their own balance in almost every
product and meal occasion
and more recently there have been other
initiatives which give customers
a more explicit choice too such as are
for farmers range where for example
customers can choose to pay tempe a
litre more for their milk
with the knowledge that all of that
tempe goes directly
to the farmers and we’ve been seeing for
quite a while now a surge of interest in
sustainability choices
but customers are saying to us they’re
not equipped to make an informed choice
on some sustainability issues and that’s
not a surprise
there is often a great deal more heat
and light
in this particular area
there is no simple traffic light system
for sustainability
credentials is red tractor enough
what does leaf mean how much carbon was
produced in bringing me
these spuds and is that a lot or is it
a little and that made morrisons think
about the wider picture
if you buy an electric car for example
you don’t have to be an expert on
emissions
the car is electric zero emissions tick
what is the equivalent for retailers and
sustainable farming
and when we thought about that we
decided that if we could say
that we’d only be supplied by net zero
carbon farms
that would take away the uncertainty
take away the ambiguity
and this lies behind our announcement in
march this year
which we called our net zero agriculture
plan
this is a pledge that will be completely
supplied
by net zero carbon british farms
by twenty thirty to achieve it we’ll
work with three thousand farmers
and growers to produce affordable net
zero
carbon meat fruit vegetables
and eggs and when it’s done
and it will be done we can look our
customers in the eye
and say that morrison’s farming supply
chain has
net zero carbon emissions
and whilst we’re doing it we’re going to
ask customers to come with us
on that journey and we’re not laying
down the law from our head offices
it’s a collaboration and the partnership
we want all the farmers we work directly
with to build their own paths
to net zero farming but with our
encouragement
support and where it’s needed guidance
and investment too
all within a broader set of principles
which include good
animal welfare and champion biodiversity
as an integral part of offsetting those
emissions
this shouldn’t be an exclusive club but
one which every farmer and therefore
every customer is able to access
our net zero agriculture pledge
is a testing and ambitious goal
and you know it’s years ahead of
industry expectations too
but we’re confident i’m confident that
we can
achieve it as i said we take the
responsibility of our scale and weight
in british farming very seriously
and showing leadership and ambition in
this area
is an important part of that but saying
it
is the easy bit we now have little more
than nine years
to achieve it some of it will be
achieved
much sooner for example we believe
we can get to zero carbon eggs in 2022
and for the most difficult areas
especially beef farming
with some very detailed plans in place
and have already identified
some of the key trial farms where the
plans
are to be first tested we’ve also built
a
good coalition around the initiative
with some outstanding partners
and the response we’ve had from the
farming community has been very positive
we started to talk and listen to
customers too
their input their views their
understanding of what we’re trying to do
and why for us as a listening
organization this is a key part
of any successful plan
and in this context as a retailer with
an important
ambitious and challenging target a more
strategic approach
such as the global farming metric which
can be championed by diverse companies
from banks to retailers makes a great
deal
of sense understanding how
data can quickly and objectively be
gathered
how technology helps translate that data
into sustainable outcomes that customers
really want to see can only be another
step forward thank you