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The National Farmers Union has warned the government it cannot import its route to food security as it reported that business confidence among British farmers has hit an all-time low this year.
Farmers warn that food production is falling as the sector struggles to maintain crop yields despite record rainfall and crushing input costs while navigating the transition to a new agricultural subsidy system.
“Simply thinking we can get our way out of this problem is naive at best and stupid at worst,” said new NFU president Tom Bradshaw, who succeeded Minette Batters earlier this year. Speaking at the launch of the annual NFU farmer confidence survey, he added that the government had taken food security for granted.
Farmers’ business confidence is at its lowest level since the NFU began surveying the measure in 2010. In the survey of almost 800 farmers and producers published on Monday, 65 percent of respondents said their profits were falling or their business was failing would survive.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has pledged to maintain the proportion of home-grown food consumed in the UK at current levels of 60 percent in a bid to win over rural communities ahead of a general election expected this year.
However, struggling farmers fear that government policies will have the opposite of the desired effect. 86 percent of farmers surveyed said that withdrawing from EU subsidies would have a negative impact on their business. The government has replaced the subsidy with a system that rewards farmers for more environmentally friendly practices.
“It is inevitable that the [Basic Payment Scheme] The exit has accelerated structural change in the industry,” said Bradshaw.
Ahead of the expected general election later this year, Bradshaw said the rural vote was “winnable” and that farmers were looking for measures that would underpin food production.
The Conservative Party risks losing some of its core rural seats in the general election.
A Survation poll for the Country Land and Business Association (CLA) found that the Conservatives would lose 53 of the 96 rural seats they currently hold and that Labor would gain 51, up from three in 2019.
Victoria Vyvyan, CLA president, said rural communities are “politically homeless” for the first time in a generation. “After decades of economic neglect, it is no surprise that there is a change in mood in the countryside,” she said, commenting on the results of local elections last week. “Tory losses show traditional loyalties no longer apply.”
8,000 farms have closed since 2019, a decline of more than 5 percent to 141,000, according to official statistics, as farmers who have failed to maintain profitability have sold to larger farms with capital to invest in technology Invest in increasing efficiency.
“These family businesses are the heart of our rural economy. If we lose the family farm, we’ll never get it back,” Bradshaw said.
Food production, meanwhile, has been affected by extreme weather conditions caused by climate change. England has just experienced its wettest 18 months since 1836, with swathes of agricultural land flooded and farmers struggling to harvest or plant new crops.
According to the Agricultural and Horticultural Development Board, an advisory body, only 45 percent of winter wheat was in good condition at the end of April, compared to 88 percent in April last year.
A survey of this year’s harvest so far in March showed that the area under cultivation fell by 15 percent for wheat and 22 percent for barley compared to last year. However, due to persistent rain, this number will be even higher in the next survey, the AHDB said.