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2. Where do we want to go?
General
Scotland Food and Drink have, with common consensus, established a mission of growing the food and drink industry sales in a sustainable way from £7.3 billion to £10 billion by 2017.
They have identified 4 priority areas to achieve this:
- Reputation
- Collaboration
- Innovation
- Skills
which, in turn, will lead to Scotland being perceived as a "land of food and drink". Each of these areas is led by a working group of volunteers from the food and drink industry.
As a food and drink producer?
Enhanced reputation would increase customers and consumer's perception of the added "value" of Scottish food and drink, would support Scottish produce at the higher end of market price, resulting in increased sales.
However a drive for increased food and drink sales must be allied to consideration and support of "raw material" supply. For example, stimulation of demand for meat and fish must be supported by attention to support mechanisms that ensure primary production can continue and develop in a economically, socially and environmentally sustainable way.
As a food and drink provider?
In simple terms we have to improve Scotland's reputation as a food and drink provider and increasingly be perceived as a good food "destination".
Scotland's reputation as a food and drink producer offers enhanced opportunities for its food and drink providers - in effect, gearing up the economic growth hoped for by producers. By the same token, an inability to bring Scotland's reputation as a food and drink provider closer to that of it as a producer, may well hold back the economic progress of the whole sector.
There also needs to be an ambition to ensure that positive eating and drinking experiences for visitors moves from the exception to the rule. Without this, significant opportunity for increased revenue from tourism will be lost.
As a food and drink consumer?
Scotland's reputation as a food and drink consumer will be driven by facts and figures. The health of the nation is a highly significant measure of the quality of what we eat. As stated earlier in this paper this issue is being addressed by workstreams 3 and 5.
In the meantime it is important that the industry works, with public sector support, to enhance Scotland's reputation as a food and drink producer and provider without being diverted by the important, but separate, issue of Scotland's own food and drink consumption.
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