A pivotal time for Yorkshire food and farming

With the dust settling after the general election, have you ever stopped to wonder just how the result might affect the food you eat each day?

And how that could affect you and others across Leeds and our other more urban areas? The answer is probably more than you might think.

Almost every constituency contains farms and those that don’t are home to businesses involved in the production and distribution of the food farmers grow.

Farms around the city and across Leeds generate over £162 million to the local economy on their own. Leeds has a very healthy food, retail and hospitality sector, underpinned by our farms and these businesses and farm diversifications also bolster the tourism industry.

British farmers and growers produce some of the highest quality, environmentally friendly food in the world. And we know Leeds shoppers are keen to buy British food whenever they can, with 83% of people believing British farms should grow as much food as they can to provide national food security.

As farmers and growers, we want to provide more of the food you love as well as look after the countryside we are all so proud of.

The general election campaign saw widespread acknowledgement that food security is national security. What we – and you – now need, alongside all of the other high priority policy areas like health, policing, education and social care, are practical policies that support a buoyant food and drink sector.

We want to see investment which allow our farms to deliver on our shared mission to produce more great British food and provide jobs and stimulate growth.

The NFU is keen to hold meetings with, Alex Sobel, Richard Burgon, Fabian Hamilton, Hilary Benn, Mark Sewards, Katie White and Rachel Reeves the MPs for Leeds and others across to discuss this further.

In a cost-of-living crisis, farming’s ability to provide affordable, climate friendly and high welfare food will be critical for families across the country, as well as underpinning the UK’s largest manufacturing sector, food and drink, worth more than £100 billion.

To enable us to achieve all this, we need the new government to prioritise setting an increased multi-year agriculture budget for the duration of the next Parliament. This isn’t just ‘money for farmers’ - it’s funding that will give farmers the confidence to invest for the future and help make the government’s aims around sustainable food production, food security, the environment and net zero possible.

The food and drink we produce in in this country has a reputation for excellence and is in demand around the world. To maintain this reputation, it is vital that the new government commits to the establishment of core production standards to ensure we will not be undercut by imported food produced to lower standards.

And we know you agree – more than one million of you signed our food standards petition in 2020 calling for our food standards to be safeguarded.

A secure and resilient supply of homegrown food can only be built on a fair and transparent supply chain that shares the risks involved in food production evenly and gives farmers confidence.

As the custodians of our great British countryside, we share the new government’s ambition to improve the environment and farmers are at the forefront of delivering new legislated environment targets. We will need to continue to adapt and make improvements on farm to support plans to tackle water quality and to mitigate the devastating impact of flooding. All of these actions will need proper investment and plans developed with those managing the land.

Working together with Leeds MPs and our other county politicians to achieve these ambitions will be good for farmers, good for the country and good for you. It will mean you get more of the British food you know and love. It will mean farmers and growers will have the confidence to build profitable, sustainable food producing businesses that contribute to jobs and growth in and beyond. And it will mean government and the wider country will have a safe and secure supply of the food we can produce in an increasingly volatile and uncertain world.