Economic Services
Providing the latest industry statistics and analysis for the Scottish red meat sector, Quality Meat Scotland’s Economics Services team works hard to make this information readily available to stakeholders, contributing to market transparency.
From contributing to meetings, events, podcasts and providing online updates and specialised media reports, the team uses a multitude of means to distribute the information to industry in a format that suits them.
The team provides regular market updates, which are published online, in the press and through the QMS weekly newsletter. Each year annual publications on cattle and sheep enterprise profitability are produced, which include estimates of greenhouse gas emissions, plus an overview of key industry statistics.
The team – made up of two experienced members – regularly speak at a range of events including industry conferences, webinars, podcasts and college and university lectures to ensure as many key stakeholders as possible benefit from their work.
QMS provides a steady flow of reporting on market prices in Scotland and globally and the team manages the market prices section of QMS’s website. This information and analysis helps support market transparency, distributing it to a wide range of stakeholders in farming, meat processing, retail and government, providing them with the knowledge to make important decisions.
During 2020/2021, the team continued to analyse the potential implications of EU exit on the sector and worked with the wider QMS staff to keep the industry informed of changes in trade rules. Similarly, the team had a role in monitoring the impact of the public health response to Covid-19 on the red meat sector and also provided the team support to the levy repatriation process.
We have a strong relationship with the farming press. Each week, reports on key market data are supplied, while the team also routinely writes feature-length articles and responds to media requests for key statistics. Every fortnight, the group releases a market commentary on a specific topic of interest, which is widely covered by the regional and national press.
Other activities involve compiling a market commentary for the widely circulated QMS weekly industry newsletter, highlighting key developments at home and overseas. This continues to be well-received across the industry and is read by a wide range of stakeholders.
A more detailed monthly market report is also published. This covers market prices, supplies, retail sales and international trade. It also covers developments in key overseas markets and provides a summary of current economic conditions.
The team also regularly deals with specific requests for market information and analysis from stakeholders. To enable these core activities to be carried out and requests to be met, the team manages and analyses a number of large datasets going back to the early part of this century.
In terms of benchmarking, the Cattle and Sheep Enterprise Profitability in Scotland is released in the autumn and offers a detailed analysis of the financial performance of a sample of Scottish cattle and sheep farming enterprises.
Drawing data from a range of cattle and sheep production systems from across Scotland, the analysis seeks to identify the key components and performance indicators that deliver a top third financial margin. The report provides a means for farmers, and their advisors, to compare their own enterprise’s performance with that of their peer group to identify strengths and weakness of their businesses and target areas for development.
In recent years, this report has also included estimates of greenhouse gas emissions on beef and sheep enterprises, which highlights the link between higher productivity and profitability with reduced emissions per unit of output.
The Scottish Red Meat Industry Profile is published each summer, ahead of the Royal Highland Show. Containing data on a wide range of topics, from livestock’s contribution to total agricultural output, through the regional structure of livestock populations and abattoir throughputs to trade and consumer demand, the report provides stakeholders with a comprehensive reference book of the size and scale of both the primary livestock sector and the red meat processing industry that operates in Scotland. This report highlights the importance of the red meat industry to Scotland’s economy, and features the route taken by meat and other livestock products to their final consumer.
The economics team is also charged with monitoring and horizon scanning developments in a wide range of national and global actions on topics crucial to the development of the red meat industry.
This includes, for example, climate change and sustainability policies and strategies, and trade, environment and agricultural policy developments. This work results in regular contact with sister organisations and industry bodies around the globe, input to Scottish Government stakeholder groups and contributions to sectoral strategic reviews at national level.
The datasets held and the analysis and interpretation carried out by the economics team is an important resource for other teams within QMS. For example, the work is used to support strategy framing and industry presentations by colleagues in marketing and industry development.