Key points
Jane King is a driven woman, on a mission to reform the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB). After taking the chief executive’s seat in February, King believes savings of £1M can be achieved by early next year, while delivering better value for levy payers’ £60M investment and engaging more with the food supply chain particularly food manufacturers.
The name of her organisation may seem cumbersome but there’s nothing awkward about the compelling case King makes for its reform and the benefits she believes change will bring the food industry.
No surprise there. After 34 years in business publishing – latterly as editorial director of Farmers Weekly – King knows a thing or two about pitching a winning argument, managing change and how to make accountants beam.
Those are all skills that will stand her in good stead, as she repurposes the AHDB towards offering farmers and growers better value for money, while persuading them to agree their levy money is well spent.
Constituted as a statutory levy board, the AHDB is funded by farmers, growers and others in the supply chain.
The six sectors covered by the organisation include: pig meat in England, with levy-payer work branded as AHDB Pork; milk in Great Britain (GB), branded as AHDB Dairy; beef and lamb in England, branded as AHDB Beef & Lamb; commercial horticulture in GB, branded as AHDB Horticulture; cereals and oilseeds in the UK, with levy work branded as AHDB Cereals & Oilseeds; and potatoes in GB, branded as AHDB Potatoes. Combined the sectors account for about 75% of the UK’s total agricultural output.
Reform is a big job, concedes King. She knows the organisation is subject to intense scrutiny – not just from levy payers but bureaucrats and politicians.
“The AHDB is at a bit of a cross roads,” says King. “Partly that’s because the industry faces enormous challenges but there are an awful lot of opportunities and, quite rightly, that puts pressure on the levy.”
Top of her to-do list was to first review and then restructure the AHDB. That restructure focused on establishing five directorates. Two are termed business partner directorates Finance and Human resources and three are delivery directorates: Strategy, Technical and Communications and market development.
“We are trying to move as one organisation taking the six levy boards and bringing them closer together to be clear around where there are opportunities to collaborate to work smarter with the money and resources.” That “internal rewiring” will enable the organisation, employing 400 people, to become more flexible, agile and cost-effective, she claims.
AHDB restructure (Return to top)
“There’s always scope to make savings by looking at what you do and asking if there is a better way of doing it. We can cut out a lot of duplication across our sector teams and join things together better to deliver maximum value for money.”
It’s a key part of King’s mission to apply business techniques, learnt in the sometimes unforgiving forge of business publishing, to the AHDB. But no drastic reduction in staff numbers is expected.
King admits that, in the past, the AHDB has perhaps engaged in too many initiatives. “We’d like to be much more focused on outcomes that drive change and benefit for the farmers.”
Her ambition for improvement is not limited to the AHDB. The winds of change must waft not just through the levy boards but the whole supply chain, she believes. “There is an awful lot of change that needs to take place in the supply chains – from the primary producer, right through. We need those chains to work much more effectively – with better trust and greater mutual understanding between all parties.”
For food manufacturers, that means greater openness and information sharing, she says. “I’d like to see food manufacturers share more openly their knowledge about what they require from our farmers and growers and their market research about new consumer trends and opportunities.”
Trust between farmers and manufacturers is a key area needing improvement. “There are huge issues of trust huge relationship issues particularly between the livestock sector and the supply chains and that’s still got to be addressed.
“We’ve got to find a way of becoming more united in our approach and develop more mutual understanding up and down the chain in order to make that chain work. We have to be a co-ordinator and a facilitator the glue to provide the information which is evidence-based and independent to help some of those supply chains come to better results.”
To help bridge some of those gaps, the AHDB has created a new market development team, which is working with the whole supply chain, focusing on both the domestic and overseas markets to provide market insights.
Some levy payer are also food manufacturers, King points out. For example McCain Foods has sizeable feet in both camps. “That helps to ensure we are very relevant to what is going on in the supply chain and we have good collaboration at board level.”
It becomes clear early during our conversation that King exudes apparently boundless optimism. But it is an optimism that could be tested, as the future is far from cloud free.
For example, as both the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) searches for savings in an age of austerity, could the AHDB offer up a harvest? Admittedly, the work of AHDB is funded by farmers, growers and others in the supply chain through statutory levies not from central government.
But DEFRA lacks the protected status of departments such as education and health and could face cuts of up to 40% as part of the government’s comprehensive spending review, due on November 25. Could envious eyes be viewing that £60M levy pot?
The future of DEFRA? (Return to top)
Then, there’s the prospect of privatisation. One informed source told Food Manufacture in June that they would be surprised “if they don’t privatise the levy boards.” Equally worrying for many industry insiders, rumours resurfaced last month about the future of DEFRA itself. Liberal Democrat deputy leader in the House of Lords Kate Parminter raised the prospect of the department being disbanded at a fringe meeting at the Lib Dem’s Bournemouth conference.
And then there’s the triennual AHDB review next year. So does King feel vulnerable? “I don’t feel vulnerable because I’m very confident about the changes we have made and are making in sharpening things up.
“If we are clear with our sector boards about where we are going and are more focused on the core things we are trying to do for our sectors – with levy payers’ support to meet the challenges and to exploit the opportunities – then I don’t think we should feel vulnerable at all in terms of the government spending review.”
Despite the uncertainties, King is resolute in her mission: to make the AHDB better able to help levy payers become more competitive and sustainable. A key task now is to balance the allocation of resources designed to help producers facing short-term hardship – such as independent information – with longer term help.
“If we don’t keep an eye on the longer term, we will not be as effective as we could be with that levy. A big part of that is thinking about how we can build a more resilient agriculture and horticulture industry.”
Given the scale of the problems facing some farmers – particularly dairy, beef and lamb producers and the increasing scrutiny directed towards the AHDB, King’s mission could prove a long, hard haul.
Meanwhile, watch our exclusive video with King in which she offered one big piece of advice to her younger self.