The Australian Ag Podcast: Tom Bull on the future of ethically-produced food

Growth in demand for ethically-produced food may present an opportunity to tap in to growing global markets according to leading sheep farmer Tom Bull.

Global retailers are increasingly bowing to shareholder pressure to source ethically-produced food – and farmers need to align themselves to this.

That’s according to leading sheep farmer Tom Bull.

Mr Bull – The Weekly Times Coles 2018 Farmer of the Year – told The Australian Ag Podcast, out today, that demands from welfare and sustainability standpoints offered farmers an opportunity to zero in on high-worth global markets.

“There’s certainly a big welfare segment that is relatively untapped,” said Mr Bull, who runs the Lambpro seedstock business at Holbrook in southern NSW whose client base produces about 1.1 million lambs a year, including for the top-shelf Kinross Station and Willow Bend lamb brands.

“The red flag for a lot of Australian lamb is mulesing – there are a lot of current brands that probably couldn’t tap into those top-end markets because they can’t guarantee they are not mulesed.

“Now we are looking at what positioning we can make from a welfare standpoint and what position we can make from a green standpoint – what are some of the accreditations we are seeing in retailers where our clients can align supply chains with different things rather than just marbling and quality.”

Tom Bull on his farm near Holbrook in southern NSW. Picture: James Wagstaff

Mr Bull said shareholders were putting increased pressure on global retailers to align themselves with ethical farming practices.

“If you look at who owns retailers, most are shareholders and we’ve seen how shareholders can dictate the narrative in things like the coal industry and power and energy,” he said.

“I think we are going to see more and more pressure from institutional investors on retailers to start changing ethical sourcing of products, and I think sheep fall into that bracket.

“No one ever talks about the link between mulesing and meat – we think it is real. Irrespective of what an individual farmer thinks of mulesing, we think there is a growing market for more humanely produced meat and there is certainly an opportunity for our client base to align, given our sheep don’t need mulesing.”

Mr Bull said globally, lamb had a unique opportunity compared to beef given a lack of supply competition from South Australia and with New Zealand its only its only direct competitor.

“And we are likely to see a reduction in supply (from them) long term,” he said.

Lamb is very much an Australian product on the export market and I think we’ve got a lot of ability to go into not only (the US) but all of a sudden we are seeing Brexit creating opportunities in the EU from next year onwards. High-end lamb has a significant opportunity.