If you missed speaker Jeff Grant, here is a quick recap and links to him speaking about the Free Trade Agreement signed in-principle with the UK.
Caption: Jeff Grant spoke about the Free Trade Agreement at the club's meeting on November 2, 2021.
Trends, consumers, consumption and climate change - massive topics facing every day New Zealanders, governments and world leaders were broadly canvassed by Grant during his talk at Rotary on November 2, 2021.
Grant, has an extensive political and governance career as well as being a sheep farmer at Balfour.
His talk focused on the time he spent in the UK after he accepted an offer from the Meat Industry Association in 2018 to head to London to represent the red meat sector's response to Brexit. He initially declined the job offer but after speaking with his wife, he accepted the role.
Consumer trends:
* One of the biggest changes is that the bulk of food now being prepared in the UK and in major cities is no longer in a kitchen at home. Food is coming via food delivery services. Modern apartments - that are close to food precincts - are now being built without full kitchens in them.
This has an impact on how companies get their food to customers, if the traditional route is no longer through major supermarkets.
* Have you heard the term of flexiterians? These are people who are mainly vegetarian but occassionally eat meat.
Climate change:
Grant doesn't believe the destocking is the answer and is a firm believer as technology keeps progressing, a lot of problems posed by climate change will be solved in the future by technology.
Grant has spoken out publicly on a number of views relating to Brexit and the red meat sector - here are some links
Jeff Grant - the carnivorous futurist: Jeff Grant likes public policy way more than politics. Awkwardly, the realisation came while he was hip-deep in political machinations.
Southland boosted by UK free trade: An in-principle free trade agreement with the UK is good news for Southland and positions New Zealand for negotiations with the EU, a sheep and beef farmer says.
Woke crowd a challenge for meat: Meat consumption has dropped 20% in continental Europe and the UK in the last two-three months and it’s not all due to the summer heat, says the NZ red meat sector’s man in London, Jeff Grant.