Food Wise 2025, the new ten year strategy for the agri-food sector, was published in July last year. It identifies the opportunities and challenges facing the sector and provides an enabling strategy that will allow the sector to grow and prosper. Food Wise includes more than 400 specific recommendations, spread across the cross-cutting themes of sustainability, innovation, human capital, market development and competitiveness; as well as specific sectorial recommendations.
In light of the UK vote to leave the EU, Brexit has been included as a standard item on the agenda of each meeting of the High Level Implementation Committee (HLIC) and will be fully factored into all the work of the State Agencies and the private sector in pursuing the sustainable growth ambitions of the Food Wise strategy. It is clear that driving the implementation of the Food Wise recommendations, particularly those related to market development, competitiveness and innovation, will assume even greater importance in the light of the UK decision.
The recent report from the ESRI examines a WTO scenario for post-Brexit UK-EU trade. The report shows that Ireland will be the most severely affected EU Member State in this scenario. This is in the main due to the high tariff rates imposed on agri-food products. Given that up to 43% of our agri-food products were exported to the UK in 2015, their decision to leave the EU reinforces the need for Ireland to continue to diversify and seek growth opportunities into other markets in order to minimise our dependence on any one market. Indeed this principle of market development is already a key component of Food Wise. We have been very active in recent years in efforts to diversify markets, and in aiming to respond to consumer demands in emerging markets.
In September, I led a very successful trade mission to China and Singapore, while my colleague, Minister of State Andrew Doyle led a Trade Mission to Vietnam and South Korea. I believe that these activities will prove very valuable in developing the rapidly growing Asian markets as important export destinations for the Irish agri-food sector. I also led a trade mission to Morocco and Algeria earlier this month. These trade visits will continue to play a key role in our efforts to provide as many markets as possible for Irish agri-food products.
