Farming after Brexit

The Government regards leaving the EU as “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reform agriculture” – but farmers are panicking Why is Brexit a cause for concern?

Brexit, says the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), “will impact UK agriculture more than any other part of the economy”. Farming has been overseen directly – and heavily protected – by Brussels since Britain joined the EEC in 1973. The EU’S Common Agricultural Policy provides a hugely generous system of subsidies (a total of £3bn per year – more than half of all farm income), which on average supplies 50-80% of a British farmer’s income. The EU also protects its farmers with high tariffs on agricultural imports from outside the bloc: an average of 12.2%, but rising to as much as 51% on lamb and 74% on milk. There are fears that if Britain’s food market were opened up to cheap imports from, say, the US, many farmers would struggle to survive.

How important is farming to the UK?

Today, it is a small industry employing relatively few people: some 466,000, or 1.5% of the UK workforce. Even in rural areas, it is not a big employer – it is far behind, say, retail and tourism. However, it is significant in other ways. It provides 61% of Britain’s food (but as staunch Brexiteers point out, the country has long imported much of its food and could import still more). It also supplies Britain’s food and drink industry, the UK’S largest manufacturing sector, which employs more than three million people. Furthermore, 70% of Britain’s land is given over to farming, so farmers are the main stewards of the countryside.

How is Brexit likely to change things?

The EU is by far the largest export market for British farming: it receives more than 60% of agri-food exports – and 90% of British beef exports. EU countries are also the source of 70% of the UK’S food imports. If Britain and the EU were to fail to conclude a free-trade deal, and British farmers were suddenly faced with high tariffs for their products, that would have a devastating effect. As things stand, it looks likely that a free-trade deal, with zero tariffs on agricultural goods, will be agreed. However, since Britain is set to leave the EU customs union, new inspections are likely to be imposed – checking, for instance, that food exports really are British-grown. This could pose a lot of difficulties for perishable products.

And how will subsidies change?

Since 2003, Common Agricultural Policy subsidies have been mostly given out as the “basic payment scheme”. That is calculated on the basis of hectares farmed, although part of the payment is now tied to environmental improvements. Many critics, including the Government, see such subsidies as inefficient, unjust and damaging: the largest are paid out to the largest landowners, including the Queen and large agribusinesses, and the system drives up the price of land, making it hard for new farmers to enter the market. It also encourages farmers to farm every acre they possibly can, with inevitable damage to the environment. But that’s set to change. While the total level of subsidy is guaranteed until 2022, Environment Secretary Michael Gove has announced a new system for farmers in England, with subsidies linked entirely to the “public goods” they provide.

What sort of public goods?

After 2019 (when Brexit becomes a reality), the largest single payments will be capped, and subsidies will be used instead to “incentivise methods of farming that create new habitats for wildlife, increase biodiversity, reduce flood risk, better mitigate climate change and improve air quality by reducing agricultural emissions”. Public money will be paid to upland sheep farmers for “protecting drystone walls and other iconic aspects of our heritage”, and used to improve public access to farmland.

How have farmers responded?

With a degree of panic. The farming lobby is understandably desperate for subsidies to remain in place. Profit margins in farming are thin: one report last year suggested that 90% of farms would be bankrupted if single farm payments were removed. Gove’s plans, says Ben Briggs, the editor of Farmers Guardian, lack “common sense”. Gove, he says, simultaneously wants to turn Britain into a paradise for wildlife; improve productivity in British farming; and use new world trade deals to get lower food prices for consumers, while also maintaining Britain’s high food and animal welfare standards. It’s just not clear how this can be done without laying waste to much of the industry.

What other concerns do farmers have about Brexit?

Labour is a particular worry. Some sectors, such as horticulture, pigs and poultry are heavily dependent on EU labour (see box). The NFU estimates that 80,000 seasonal workers are needed every year to pick Britain’s fruit, vegetable and flower crops; 75% of these workers come from Romania and Bulgaria, the rest from other eastern EU nations. Every Christmas season the poultry industry needs 13,000 workers to process turkeys and 58% of these are foreign. Of the vets in Britain’s abattoirs, 85% are EU nationals. In total, about one in ten agricultural workers in the UK are foreign migrants.

How can labour be guaranteed?

The NFU is calling for a new seasonal agricultural workers scheme, similar to the one that existed before mass EU migration began. Gove has accepted that there is a “strong and compelling” argument for such a scheme. However, he has also said he is unable to make a firm announcement, because this is an issue for the Home Office. This is a serious problem for farmers, who have to plan ahead and raise animals or plant to fulfil contracts with their suppliers. By 2017, the number of seasonal workers had already dropped heavily – EU migrants were discouraged by the Brexit vote and the fall of sterling against the euro. As a result, large amounts of fruit and vegetables were left to rot in the fields and orchards.