Farmer’s chief warns of risks to the UK food supply chain
Buffeted by global markets and the big six supermarkets controlling 80 per cent of the market, Yorkshire’s food producers have long called for a fair price at the farm gate.
While the average farmgate price for milk in May was 34.2p per litre, supermarkets were achieving double that price. During the peak of the Inheritance Tax Relief protests, in 2024 and last year, stretching from the Humber Bridge to Thirsk, numerous farmers underlined they were happy to pay the extra tax bill, but could not do so while the core of their enterprises remained on the margins of viability.
When Prince William recently visited Swaledale sheep producers who have diversified, they impressed on him they just wanted to farm.
Speaking ahead of spending two days at the Great Yorkshire Show to hear from the region’s farmers about their leading concerns, NFU President Tom Bradshaw said he understood farmers “frustration that they're not making money out of producing food and so they have to diversify”.
Asked if achieving the aspiration of many Yorkshire farmers - a fair price at the farm gate - was an impossible dream, Mr Bradshaw replied: “No, I think there are ways of trying to deliver that. What we are not going to end up fighting for or being successful with is pure protectionist policy which says minimum pricing at the farm gate is something which is going to be deliverable. That is I'm afraid, a pipe dream.”
Mr Bradshaw said the incoming Government needed to enure “fair standards for imports” which are driving “the system of unfairness”.
He related how there had been a UK shortage of eggs after the invasion of Ukraine because UK farmers weren't getting paid enough, so eggs with salmonella warnings were imported from Italy.
Mr Bradshaw said: “That is not acceptable that we are willing to undermine our food system in that way. We should have just run out of eggs because then it wakes everybody up to the realities of a fragile supply chain.
"We have got the same with poultry at the moment. We are increasing our welfare standards, we are reducing our stocking density by 20 per cent down to 30kg per metre squared from 38kg, but the planning system doesn't function, so what we end up doing is drawing in more imports from Poland that is produced to at best the 38kg, again undermining the value of British poultry.
"It's about how do we make sure there is a genuinely level playing field. To do that we need core standards of production so all our imports have to meet those core standards."
Mr Bradshaw said the NFU was working with the WWF and the RSPCA to try and drive forward a concept of core standards. He said: “There's no point in having an out of sight out of mind attitude where we want to have the best animal welfare here but are willing to turn a blind eye to what goes on in other countries.
“We ban pesticides here for environmental risk, operator risk or human health, but if they are used in other parts of the world we simply don't care and we'll carry on bringing in the product. That's not how we solve a global crisis and what it ends up being is that we live on a green and pleasant island but we don't produce any of our food. At a time of the geopolitical situation we are facing now we have huge volatility and risk within our food supply.
"What we shouldn't do as farmers is keep subsidising food production. We talk about defence and security, energy security, the country for the last 15 or 20 years has absolutely taken food security for granted and just believed it will always be there.”