As Brexit looms, Sandison joins U.S. delegation in London to set the stage for new UK trade agreements

Chris McGann
Communications

WSDA Director Sandison visited U.K. sheep farm
 Baber Sheep Breeding and Consulting. 

WSDA Director Derek Sandison traveled to London with a small delegation of agriculture officials
earlier this month to explore new trade opportunities with the United Kingdom as it negotiates its post-Brexit relationship with the European Union.

The U.K. sponsored the seven-member team of American ag representatives through the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA). Sandison joined five other state agriculture directors and NASDA’s CEO Barb Glenn on an itinerary that included farm tours and dozens of meetings with senior British trade and agriculture officials, university leaders, research scientists, farmers and business representatives.

The trade mission came at a time when U.K. leaders are trying to find ways to minimize economic disruption associated with the nation’s push to leave the European Union (EU).

Depending on the outcome of the negotiations, the U.K. will need to explore and expand new agricultural markets to feed its citizens and keep its farm economy afloat.

“As they move towards Brexit, they are very much interested in entering into a free-trade agreement with the United States,” Sandison said.

The meetings were a chance to set the stage for discussions with U.S. trade representatives in the future.

“They wanted to learn more about U.S. agriculture – what some of our issues are, what products we might be interested in exporting and what products we might be interested in importing,” Sandison said.

Sandison toured a UK beef farm on a recent trip to the U.K.

Washington already exports products such as hops and wine to the U.K. But the discussions revealed an opportunity to expand that relationship. Sandison said British officials and producers expressed interest in exporting more lamb, cider and other beverages to the U.S.

The delegation, which represented individual states, was not there to try make a deal, rather they wanted to get a better understanding of the landscape.

“We were there to understand what our producers will be facing when they want to sell products to the U.K. and what the U.K.’s bottom line is,” Sandison said. “A lot of what we talked about are the standards, phytosanitary standards for example, that are imposed currently under EU restrictions and what we can expect if they are free of European Union restrictions.

Compared to U.S. standards, the European Union’s standards are often stricter in areas such as pesticide use, veterinary medicines, and decontamination techniques. This is especially true for food safety standards associated with new technologies in agriculture and food processing such as genetically modified organisms (GMO), growth hormones and lactic acid treatments.

“We were trying to understand what we can expect,” Sandison said. “We wanted to know if they would deviate from the EUs current restrictive approach and liberalize their standards a bit.”

Sandison said British officials expressed interest in moving towards less restrictive import policies, they did not discuss any specific standards.

The U.K. is currently negotiating the terms by which they would conduct trade with the EU after Brexit. The two most likely scenarios at this point include one in which the U.K. comes to an agreement that will allow it to continue to do unrestricted business within the EU. In this case, standards would likely align closely with current EU standards.

Sandison with delegation at Thatchers Cider orchard. The UK
seeks to expand its export markets. 

Another possibility would be a situation in which the U.K. does not reach an agreement with the EU but leaves the union anyway. In this hard-break scenario, Sandison believes they would be more open to adopting standards that would facilitate more trade with U.S. producers.

“If it’s a hard break, then I think they are going to be more interested in getting to a solid agreement with the United States, something that would promote the ease of trade and movement of goods,” Sandison said.

At this stage in the process, the Brexit outcome remains highly uncertain. But whatever the outcome, Sandison’s work with his NASDA partners could well lead to export opportunities in the future.

Visit the WSDA International Marketing Program webpage to learn about other activities WSDA conducts to promote Washington agriculture abroad.

WSDA joins the national call to reduce food waste

Chris McGann
Communications

In the U.S., more than one-third of all available food goes uneaten through loss or waste. Food is the single largest type of waste in our daily trash.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1.3 billion tons of food worth nearly $680 billion are wasted each year. In Washington, more than 350,000 tons of edible food was disposed of in landfills in 2015.

WSDA Director Derek Sandison (L) speaks
with a colleague at the NASDA conference.
* credit NASDA 

For the industry that feeds the world and also depends on limited, costly and increasingly scarce resources, that’s an unsustainable problem that needs to be addressed and it’s one of the big issues addressed this month at the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA) annual meeting.

NASDA, a non-profit organization supporting agriculture, held its annual conference in New Mexico this year, drawing agriculture leaders from around the country, including WSDA Director Derek Sandison. Conference attendees discuss a broad range of food policy issues, including food waste.

Director Sandison joined NASDA members at the meeting as they adopted a new policy on food waste that follows the group’s “Pledge to End Food Waste.”

"Agriculture both defines and demands sustainability," he said. "It’s too costly to the agriculture industry, the environment and the people who rely on the nutritious food we work so hard to produce to let it go to waste."

WSDA has joined NASDA's pledge to support:

• public policies that offer opportunities to reduce, recover and recycle food waste.
• efforts to improve coordination and communication among federal, state and municipal stakeholders to use resources more efficiently and effectively to address food waste.
• the food waste hierarchy framework.
• research efforts and new technologies that address reduction and recovery of food waste.

Waste reduction in Washington 

Washington state has already adopted a waste-reduction goal shared by our federal partners.

For more than a year, WSDA worked with lawmakers, stakeholders and other agencies to craft food-waste-reduction legislation that was passed this year.

The newly approved legislation directs the state Department of Ecology to develop a plan to cut food-waste in half by 2030 in consultation with WSDA and the Department of Health.

To achieve that waste-reduction goal, the first step is preventing food waste in the first place, then rescuing edible food that would go to waste and getting it to hungry people. When that’s not possible, recovering the nutrients in that food through composting and anaerobic digesters is another option.

WSDA's role in waste reduction 

WSDA is leading two stakeholder engagement groups – one for food businesses and one for hunger relief professionals.

This month, WSDA organized a meeting of stakeholders from Kroger, Washington Hospitality Association, Pasco Farmers Market, the Washington Dairy Council and the Washington State Tree Fruit Association. The group shared ideas, voiced their concerns, and let us know what they’ve been doing to to reduce food waste in their respective industries.

Over the coming months, WSDA will engage experts in food safety, food waste collection and conversion, education and behavioral change, hunger relief and food business as partners in developing the plan.

Drafts of the Washington Food Waste Reduction Plan are scheduled to be available in spring 2020, with a final plan ready by September 2020.