The Country 04/11/25: Kate Acland talks to Jamie Mackay

We find Beef + Lamb NZ’s chairwoman in the UK in a Bath pub, wearing her Sugar Loaf Wines producer’s hat. We also talk about B+LNZ leading a joint statement by global agricultural organisations calling for countries to follow best scientific practice and take a split-gas approach when reporting greenhouse gas emissions. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kate Ackland does a Canterbury farmer. She's also the chair
of Beef and Lamb New Zealand. Today as we record
this interview, we find it in a pub in Bath.
What a beautiful city that is in Western England. Kate,
you're over there wearing your wine hat, not your wino's hat,
your wine hat because you're involved in a Marlboro vine yard,

(00:20):
a winery called sugar Loaf Wine. Tough going at the moment.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Oh hi, Jennie. Look, it is really tough going in
the wine industry at the minute. So yes, I'm just
over here visiting some visiting some buyers and drawing up
a bit of business.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Are you helping the consumption of the sugar Loaf wines?
And the Bath pub? Do they stock your wine in
their pub?

Speaker 2 (00:39):
They do? Actually, we're at a great pub. I've got
eight wine buyers with me and we are working our
way through the Sugarloaf range as we speak, So we're
about midway through the range at the moment.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Yeah, talk to me about and I want to move
on to greenhouse gas emissions. Putting on your Beef and
Lamb New Zealand hat. But how tough is it on
a like on a scale of one to ten for
viticulture for the wine industry at the moment, because are
people who are growing grapes effectively running them running at
a loss?

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Look, it's really tough for growers at the minute, and
I think a lot of them are running at a loss.
We've seen a couple of just massive harvests back to
back and there's just an oversupply of product at the minute.
But you know, there's good science that the industry is
self moderating in terms of reducing the crop loads. There's
quite a lot of replanting going on, and there's been
a really good push by New Zealand wine growers and

(01:32):
a lot of wineries to get out into market and
start selling some product.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Are people changing their drinking habits and is this going
to be an ongoing thing or is this just going
to be a fashionable cycle.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Look, I think we've been saying that for years, that
people are changing their drinking habits. I think, Look, Marlbaret's
serving of Blong is unlike any other wine, and I
think it has a really strong positive future. I mean,
I'm a strong believer in the future of it. I
think this is just a bit of a bump in
the wrong that we need to get through.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
Well, good luck selling some of that sugar loaf wine
in the UK, Kate Acklin, let's put on your Beef
and Lamb New Zealand hat. I'm reading a headline here
Beef and Lamb en Z leads global agricultural organizations in
a united call for split gas greenhouse gas emissions reporting.
Are you getting goodbye in? Are you like Jasinda? You

(02:23):
know Jasinda had the christ Church call, You've got the
split gas call. Kate.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Well, look, Jamie, this is actually massive and it all
came about from Beck. In May. Last time I was
in the UK, I had a coffee with a guy
called Tom Bradshaw, who was the head of the NFU
in England, and we were just talking about greenhouse gas
reporting and metrics and the fact that we really need
to be treating methane differently, and so we came up

(02:48):
with a bit of a plan to try and get
a consensus view on this. And initially it was just
going to be between the NFU England and Beef and
LA New Zealand, and so our staff got together and
sort of formed this joint position. But then they really
sort of took the bull by the horns of those
and they went right out and they started talking to
other organizations, to the Australians and the Canadians and the

(03:09):
Americans and the Irish, and then suddenly this thing is
just sort of snowballed. So we've got thirty organizations from
fourteen different countries who have all so far, I mean
there's more by the day, but signed up to this call.
And it's a call to governments to start reporting on
greenhouse gases as a split guess approach, particularly in their
international contribution. So when we're talking about your Paris accord,

(03:32):
we need to be treating me sane differently. And you
know it's very hard. We often hear from the New
Zealand government that they don't want to be the outlier,
and so getting this global view of it, suddenly they're
not the outlier anymore. You know, you've got all the
other agricultural nations they're talking about greenhouse gases in the
same way. So to get this level of agreement and

(03:53):
this level of buy in, it's sort of four years
conversations to get to this point, but it is really massive.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
Who are you making the call too?

Speaker 2 (04:02):
So the idea is to put a bit of pressure
on all of the respective governments as we head into
the next round of people doing their Paris commitments, to
actually start treating methane differently. So you know, we'll be
talking to New Zealand politicians and we'll be saying, look, hey,
this is not just us, this is not just agriculture

(04:23):
trying to look after ourselves. Actually, you know, we've got
developing nations, We've got Cambodia and ken here, and we've
got established agricultural nations and they're all saying that actually
methane should be treated differently, that food production is important,
and you know, let's get the metrics right.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
Hey, Kate Ackland, I know it's late in the evening
UK time, Monday night. Are you going to get up
at four am in the morning and watch the Melbourne Cup.
You're at Canterbury, your landed gentry. Aren't you from Canterbury?
You will have grown up on this sort of stuff.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
I think you know. I'm a good Tarannika girl, so
my so hopefully I'll still be asleep at four o'clock
in the morning. But I only arrived in the UK
at six am this morning, so actually I probably will
be awake, well.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
You probably will be if you're up. Have a look
at it and looking forward to the Melbourne Cuppa, a
race that stops two nations. Thanks for some of your
time from the other side of the world.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
Great bath to talk