Continuing the success of its previous four Wednesday morning webinars the National Sheep Association (NSA) held the latest event in its Breakfast Club series this week. The organisation was delighted to welcome the chairman of Natural England Tony Juniper and Natural England head of agriculture, Geoff Sansome, for an interesting breakfast discussion at the webinar called ‘Regenerative farming Vs Rewilding: An early morning discussion on sheep in the environment’. The webinar also featured NSA chief executive Phil Stocker, NSA chairman Dan Phipps and NSA Northern region chairman Thomas Carrick for a broad discussion on balancing productivity and environment, landscape recovery implementation, rewilding, species re-introduction, and how these all of these issues could impact UK sheep farmers.
Brexit will bring the most seismic change to how the UK works in a generation. Since 1973, the country has been a part of the European Union. But on January 31 this year, the UK officially ended its partnership in the European project. The day itself could be said to have been anticlimactic - Brexit day did little to bring material changes to the lives of the people in Cumbria. This is because while the UK was officially no longer a member of the UK, it had instead passed into a transition period , where the vast majority of its existing arrangements with the EU were kept the same. The Brexit transition period is due to end as 2020 ends.
The Cumbrian farming community has welcomed the announcement that a trade deal has at last been agreed between the UK Government and the EU. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has agreed with European Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen that the deal, from January 1, will mean no tariffs on each.
Cumbria sheep farmers in fear of crippling no-deal Brexit
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image copyrightPA Media
image captionBritish lamb is seen as a premium product in the EU - but would continental consumers pay 48% more for it?
Cumbrian sheep farmers are warning a no-deal Brexit would be absolutely crippling for the sector.
A third of British lamb is exported and nearly all of this goes to the EU.
Keswick farmer Will Cockbain said: If we leave with no deal and tariffs are applied, the tariff on lamb is 48% so that is absolutely crippling.
Thomas Carrick, a hill farmer from Alston Moor, agreed it doesn t take a genius to understand it s going to have some serious consequences .
Each dawn, sheep farmer Thomas Carrick works the land through freezing winter rain and snow, 2,000 feet up in the bleak Cumbrian fells.
Like many British farmers, he is about to find out if life outside the EU is even colder and darker.
Well used to weather dependent good and bad years, sheep farming is facing a possible man-made disaster when dawn breaks on the New Year in post-Brexit Britain.
More than a third of British sheep meat is exported, and 96% of it goes to the EU, according to industry figures.
With a no-deal Brexit on January 1, British lamb would face tariffs of 48%, making it prohibitively expensive to customers in Europe.