AHDB campaigns

[Scholsey]

Everything that seems to come from the levy boards is telling us how to be ‘more efficient’ or ‘improve this’ or ‘spend all your money this way and your be better off’, surely it’s getting to the point now where they need to stop telling us how to produce what we already are for cheaper and concentrate on getting more for what we are selling?

It’s their job to promote our product, as a business we’ve paid well over £1000 in levy’s to Milk/beef levy boards and all i’ve been told for that £1000 is I am not doing it cheaply enough.

The next 12 months should be purely focused on consumer awareness and advertising campaigns, how AHDB can not see this is beyond me.

Of my £1000 they spent £100 on market development, would like to see the ‘developed markets’ that’s come from that, £290 finding out what I am doing and what I should be doing, £90 telling me what they are spending my money on and £250 hosting meetings 100 miles away from me telling me i need to attend to stand a chance of making any money what so ever.

I have always supported AHDB but it’s getting to the point where we need them to focus on the right things more than ever. What do others think?

 

[Tarw Coch]

If they want to look at efficiency they can look at themselves, the other day the post man rolled up at dinner time with an invite to a AHDB farm walk that had started at 10am that day, surely it ought to have been posted out at least a fortnight earlier.

Last one of their farm walks I went on I arrived an hour late and boosted the attendance by 50%, they’d held it on the same day as the local market which is why I was late, not that it mattered to me, I only went as I knew the host farmer relatively well, knew he had done quite a bit of work at this farm so went for a nosey, I wasn’t remotely interested in the subject covered. Funniest thing that day was listening to one of the organisers blowing smoke up the host farmers ass whilst having our free lunch, every now and them the farmer would give me a cheeky smile before encouraging the chap he was talking to to heap more praise onto him, it was worth attending purely for the entertainment value.

 

[Farmer_Joe]

adhb have some research stuff ive used for sheep before,

other than that im not aware of any campaign to boost meat which as a consumer has come from them,

Unfortunately from that perspective their yet another body which collect subs off us and decide how they best spend them (not us the funders), we cant challenge their productivity or effectiveness and purely on that basis their not fit for purpose.

bit like red tractor but at least thats optional and i no longer subscribe to them...

Quite frankly all these bodies need a massive reform, their full of dead wood justifying their own jobs funded off the back of farming...

 

[Agrivator]

The meat promotion board in Scotland is QMS,

I get the impression that their main aim is to promote themselves.

 

[Agrinoc]

I think AHDB's marketing campaigns are usually quite hidden from us lot as if it was being marketed to us as farmers then we are the wrong audience!

I'm pretty sure they have a page where it shows results of all their campaigns tho. Its fair enough to bash them but they do a lot of marketing that is targeted towards young city folk.
Ive taken a quick look tho.
Their dairy one improved milk sales amongst young parents by 11%
Their pork one made an additional £12 million in pork sales
Their beef one added £1.2m to thin cut steak market and reach 62% of uk households
Their lamb one has just started and created "love lamb week"

They definitly promote markets but its to much younger consumers in cities, I can imagine one single advert on primetime tv wuld cost much more than what they can spend.

 

[Bipper]

What other industry has a multi billion turnover and spends a combined £5m on trainig, R& D and marketing?

I think as an industry if we want propoer promotion we need to be serious about it and that may mean levies need to go up, not down.

At the same time we do need to make sure we get value and there is accountability.

 

[hally]

I don’t think many forward minded farmers complain about the amount of money we give for promotion but the way it is spent. I am sick of rubbish being posted to me about basic farm advice which is all freely available on the internet and a farmer who cannot find it is going to struggle anyway, whilst meat consumption is getting hammered on the press daily without any address from our “ professionals” representatives. It strikes me as fiddling while Rome burns, it will not matter how efficient we become if our market has been destroyed.

 

[Oat]

I think the Recommended List crop variety trials are very useful. I know many people will argue over the exact fungicide programmes used, but they at least give an indication of each varieties' potential and depending on the location of the data how suitable it may be to your farm. A few years ago they did start doing some more localized trials were more typical fungicide programmes were used, but I think some of the breeders were reluctant to have their varieties tested in more challenging conditions.

 

[Brisel]

This is why they harp on about efficiency

There's over £700/cow difference in performance between the top & bottom 25% in sucklers

 

[Tarw Coch]

Sounds like there’s good money to be made in suckers then

 

[S J H]

This is why they harp on about efficiency

There's over £700/cow difference in performance between the top & bottom 25% in sucklers

That's for the farmer to find out, if they're not making money then they'll go out of business. I don't understand why we need benchmarking and people to tell us how to do the job, just put all the money in promotion and researching emerging markets.

 

[Brisel]

Ok, I get that. The fact that they are a levy funded body subject to the rules that come with it, they can only do generic marketing for meat, milk etc not Buy British which we’d all prefer. Perhaps post Brexit the shackles will be removed and they can do this. I sincerely hope so - no one else is really doing it and they are best placed to make use of the market intelligence they have built up.

 

[S J H]

Ok, I get that. The fact that they are a levy funded body subject to the rules that come with it, they can only do generic marketing for meat, milk etc not Buy British which we’d all prefer. Perhaps post Brexit the shackles will be removed and they can do this. I sincerely hope so - no one else is really doing it and they are best placed to make use of the market intelligence they have built up.

I can't understand that though, QMS basically say that everything is better in Scotland. The last red tractor advert I saw for 'pulled pork' was just advertising pork. There was nothing British about it.

 

[Goweresque]

What other industry has a multi billion turnover and spends a combined £5m on trainig, R& D and marketing?

The AHDB has a budget of £56m.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_and_Horticulture_Development_Board

 

[teslacoils]

I like the research side of the adhb . They could put the recommended list in the bin though.

 

[Princess Pooper]

Well I saw some of the lamb marketing campaign in September..as as been stated, farmers are not the target audience so many will never see such campaigns! And I've just seen some anti-sheep environmentalists on Twitter complaining about seeing some EU funded British sheep marketing so something is happening!

 

[Gulli]

Beef in china by christmas apparently.

 

[gone up the hill]

I think AHDB's marketing campaigns are usually quite hidden from us lot as if it was being marketed to us as farmers then we are the wrong audience!

I'm pretty sure they have a page where it shows results of all their campaigns tho. Its fair enough to bash them but they do a lot of marketing that is targeted towards young city folk.
Ive taken a quick look tho.
Their dairy one improved milk sales amongst young parents by 11%
Their pork one made an additional £12 million in pork sales
Their beef one added £1.2m to thin cut steak market and reach 62% of uk households
Their lamb one has just started and created "love lamb week"

They definitly promote markets but its to much younger consumers in cities, I can imagine one single advert on primetime tv wuld cost much more than what they can spend.

So what is your job/ board role at the AHDB Agrnoc?? because the bulls**t you spout above is just the same utter garbage/ excuses that I hear time and time again at AHDB meetings from AHDB board members/ staff!

YOU JUST DONT GET IT!

 

[gone up the hill]

This is why they harp on about efficiency

There's over £700/cow difference in performance between the top & bottom 25% in sucklers

So many holes in the above figures its impossible to know where to begin!

The forage costs are not representive for starters and well too low on real farms!

The template above for suckler cow costing's is useless and so many costs are clearly hidden in sections without actually explaining what they are!

As a suckler cow farmer I would take the above template and chuck it on the bin as if you want to work out your true costs they all need to be accounted for!

 

[Grass And Grain]

Ok, I get that. The fact that they are a levy funded body subject to the rules that come with it, they can only do generic marketing for meat, milk etc not Buy British which we’d all prefer. Perhaps post Brexit the shackles will be removed and they can do this. I sincerely hope so - no one else is really doing it and they are best placed to make use of the market intelligence they have built up.

Lets hope they are allowed to promote British produce/meat in future.

Seems a bit silly to be currently promoting generic beef and pigmeat sales in the UK given that we import to satisfy demand. Seemingly GB producers are paying a levy to promote imports! Obviously AHDB do also promote our produce for export markets.