PHOTO: FEFAC
INTERVIEW ▶▶▶ Asbjørn Børsting
“Severe supply chain disruptions have been avoided”
FEFAC has elected Asbjørn Børsting as its new president, for the term 2020 – 2023. All About Feed talked with him about his new position and the impact of COVID-19 on the EU feed industry.
BY MARIEKE PLOEGMAKERS B
ørsting has been engaged in the Agri-food sector for four decades at many levels, covering both commercial activities as former CEO of the Grain and Feed company DLG – and through his work with both national and EU
agricultural policy making as CEO in the Danish Agricultural Coun- cil. For the last six years he has been director of the Danish Grain & Feed trade association – DAKOFO. He also currently chairs the Danish Bioeconomy Panel.
Congratulations on your election as the new president of FEFAC. You’ve been elected for the period 2020 – 2023. What will be your main areas of interest during this period? FEFAC established its animal feed industry vision 2030 a few years
FEFAC must work on increasing European protein production.
ago. It’s still valid of course and I fully support it. The launch of the FEFAC feed sustainability charter 2030 will help us implement the vision and ensure that it’s effectively kept alive all the way up to 2030. My term will clearly be dominated by policy discussions in the context of the “farm to fork” strategy and the ambition to de-
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velop more sustainable food systems. The European protein plan will probably get a more central role as part of the ongoing CAP reforms. FEFAC must work with recommendations on relevant measures to increase Europe’s protein production. This can be done by measuring how to make protein crops relatively more competitive at the farm level and by giving a higher priority to na- tional and European – research initiatives on plant breeding and processing of raw materials into competitive feed. We also have to maintain a strong focus, in this development, on securing the Eu- ropean feed sector’s position in order to maintain its competitive- ness internationally. Much of our livestock sector in Europe must be competitive in international export markets. I also hope that FEFAC can deliver solutions on facilitating deforestation-free soy supply chains fairly soon. The updating of the FEFAC soy sourcing guidelines is in full swing, and we sense that there is a lot of antic- ipation that the impact of these updated guidelines will be as big as when the first version was released back in 2015. It is a key FE- FAC objective to be ready before the EU legislative proposals de- signed to achieve deforestation-free supply chains are published.
In what way is the animal feed industry affected by the restrictive measures due to COVID-19? Since the establishment of the EU “green lanes” agreement, we’ve been able to avoid severe supply chain disruptions. For imports there were also challenges but, together with our supply chain partners, we’ve able to ensure that supplies to livestock farmers weren’t disrupted. I expect that the influence on the European feed industry in the coming years will mostly be defined by ef- fects in the downstream market. We know that consumption pat-
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