Paying more for our food may be the least bad option for UK

NO one wants to have to pay more for something they have been used to getting on the cheap for years.

But Defra Secretary George Eustice is right today to warn consumers that the price of food is going to have to rise to meet the increased costs of producing and transporting it.

He could have gone further and admitted food had been far too cheap for far too long and that, if we are serious about paying our farmers and our food processors a fair price for what we put on our plates, we are going to have to get used to a bigger proportion of our weekly income going on the food that sustains us.

Most consumers back calls to increase the proportion of food available that is grown, reared and produced here in the UK. Surveys tell us again and again that high animal welfare and environmental standards, rigorous health and safety regulations and paying living wages to British farm and food workers are widely supported.

Yet for decades food production in the UK has been heavily subsidised while imports, often produced to far lower standards than would be acceptable in Britain, flood in and shoppers, lured by low prices, snap them up.

We are now at a crossroads. Leaving the European Union has freed Britain from the shackles of the Common Agricultural Policy, the single biggest drain on EU finances.

It means we can change the way farmers are supported by taxpayers, directing subsidy away from those who simply own large tracts of farm towards those providing public benefits in managing the environment.

The risk with this policy, however – especially if it is combined with new trade deals with countries who operate to lower standards than in the UK – is that more food could be imported, less food produced here and farming replaced by land management schemes with food reduced or even removed from the equation.

Global instability and crises like coronavirus have helped to underline the need for the UK to increase its self-sufficiency in food production. Growing public awareness of where food comes from and how it is produced should also lead to increased concern to buy from British producers.

A whole raft of government policies, from raising wages as part of the levelling up agenda, reducing the reliance on migrant farm labour and boosting salaries to get more UK workers onto farms, are bound to increase the price of food. Put up input costs and the final product gets more expensive. It is simple economics.

Meeting rigorous targets for reducing carbon emissions is also likely to be costly, at least in the medium term. A lot of those costs will fall on farming, food production and food transportation. The result? Bigger bills at the supermarket checkout.

The danger is that faced with soaring costs of production, Britain will look offshore for more of its food. Some consumers might welcome smaller food bills, but the costs will come in other ways. Rural communities will be decimated, environmental standards fall and, in a crisis, we could even go hungry. The alternative may have to be higher food costs. But is that such a high price to pay, compared to the alternative?