This week’s NFU conference saw farmers speaking out at what they see as a ‘race to the bottom on price’ by retailers. The NFU’s Martin Brown levelled this challenge at Tesco’s UK Chief Executive, Ashwin Prasad who was speaking at the conference: “Farmers are producing food currently below the cost of production. Are you and the other major retailers not worried about the future supply of home-produced food, and what steps are you going to take to change the poor returns farmers receive from the current supply chain?”

Mr Brown also remarked on the trade deals that “are giving other countries greater access to our markets”, to which Mr Prasad responded that they only buy overseas product “when we’ve exhausted the available [British] supply.”

On a similar food security note, the Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs, Angela Eagle admitted in a BBC Farming Today interview that “it’s an unintended consequence of earlier [farming incentive] schemes that agricultural land was taken completely out of production.”

This has been a concern for some time and it’s heartening to hear that this has been acknowledged as an issue. Ms Eagle went on to say of the new Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme that “farmers are right to say they want certainty and there’s been too much chopping and changing of the schemes and that’s made it very difficult for smaller farmers.” We’d add that the certainty upon which farmers can rely will only come when funding horizons stretch further than the current parliamentary term.

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