Ian Backhouse: A world of missed opportunity unless we back farmers

This is on top of the rapid economic development taking place in two of the world’s most populated countries. For the first time, more people in the world now live in the city than in rural areas.

While there is still poverty in some of the world’s cities, the reality is that on the whole the urban majority has more money and is more inclined to spend it on improving their diet.

By 2050, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) believes that the amount of meat, dairy and fats in the daily diet of people in developing countries will have risen from 20 to 29 per cent, while cereal consumption will have fallen by 10 per cent.

To meet this demand, the world’s output of meat will need to rise to 470m tonnes – double current levels. Overall, the FAO expects total demand for food to rise by 70 per cent in the 44 years from 2006 – 2050.

Faced with this challenge, you might think that the future looks good for farmers here in Yorkshire.

Yet, in the UK, we don’t seem to feel any pressure to produce extra food. It is true that those commodities exposed to world markets – especially cereals – are experiencing significant price rises for the second time in four years. But others are facing real difficulties.

The price of wheat is fundamental, with price rises resulting in direct or indirect costs right across agricultural production.

Rising prices in cereals, oilseeds and soya proteins have a direct impact on the cost of rearing livestock, particularly beef and dairy cattle, pigs and poultry.

However, vegetable growers also face indirect costs through rising land prices and grassland comes under increasing pressure, as the temptation to replace it with cereals builds.

Across all farming sectors then, there is pressure to see increases in farm-gate prices, but those increases need to be significant. It is not enough to just cover the extra costs of production, there needs to be a real incentive to invest in our future food supply.

While supermarket executives pledge not pass on commodity price rises to consumers, somebody will have to take the pain, and the real danger is that it will be farmers.

This is a dangerous strategy and one borne out of a society that has come to see cheap food almost as a right.

The reality is that those further up the supply chain will only be able to exert downward pressure on prices for a limited period of time, before supply starts to run dry from our own production.

And when buyers turn to the rest of the world to try and replace that lost production, they will be competing with nations who have many mouths to feed and plenty of cash to splash.

To top it all, the same consumers and retailers who demand that we produce food for them as cheaply as possible are the first to stand in the way as we look to build larger, more efficient production units, using the latest in production and welfare technology.

So it seems that while elsewhere in the world the focus is on increasing production, investing in so called “sustainable intensification” and ensuring future supply, UK farmers continue to be beaten into submission, accepting low returns, increasing regulation and lack of opportunity to develop.

When society, politicians and supermarket executives wake up and join the real world, farmers will be asked to respond and produce more, but it may be too late. Meeting the future demand for food requires action now and we must ensure we drive this message home.

Ian Backhouse is a Goole farmer and the National Farmers Union’s crops board chairman.