Counting sheep
From the Guardian (slightly outside our usual beat, but noted by Robin Evans on Twitter)
The UK is the world’s third largest lamb exporter – after Australia and New Zealand – with just over a third of the market.
That can’t be true. Even if Australia and New Zealand and the UK were the only exporters, the UK being in third place would mean it had to have less than a third of the market. The (UK) Agriculture & Horticulture Development Board (PDF) thinks it’s about 9% — yes, that’s not just lamb, but lamb makes up most of the NZ and Oz exports.
I’m not sure what the ‘just over a third’ really is. It might be the proportion of UK-raised lamb that is exported.
It’s also interesting to see the Guardian slant on the story: that supermarkets should refuse to stock any imported lamb at this time of the year and insist on English lamb raised indoors, out of season.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
They may mean by value rather than by numbers of sheep – a quick look at “the sheep site”
http://www.thesheepsite.com/focus/5m/99/global-sheep-meat-market-thesheepsite
(with a name like that I had to follow it up!!)
says that Oz and NZ export a lot to Asia where they get lower return than exporting to Europe or America.
8 years ago
That’s possible. Though it looks like it would take more than a three-fold differential in pricing to make up for the volume difference.
8 years ago
The Meat and Wool Economic Service, which has been around for as long as I can remember, exists to provide reliable data for farmers, meat processors and is also used by government. They have global indicator data on their website, by country, here: http://www.beeflambnz.com/information/global-indicators/
8 years ago
Thanks, that’s good to see. The report I linked to was from the UK equivalent, I think.
8 years ago