Farming sector in UK is in a deep crisis

The NFU laid out the dire state of British agriculture for the benefit of MPs in a Westminster Hall debate this week. Bridgwater and West Somerset MP Ian Liddell-Grainger tells Defra

Secretary Thérèse Coffey the evidence was irrefutable – and the Government must intervene

DEAR Thérèse, You have probably heard it already from other sources but it is my duty to tell you that that the UK farming sector is in a deep crisis at the moment – and only direct and swift Government intervention is going to extricate it.

Which means a quick reshuffle of priorities in your department which now needs to devote all energy towards resolving a situation which, if left to develop, is going to leave this country short of food. And that is by no means an exaggeration.

Farmers have battled through innumerable tough patches in the past, generally caused by unexpected price rises. But at least they were single-figure increases. This time whichever sector one examines we are talking about double-digits.

Something which any business would be hard-pressed to adjust to overnight but is almost impossible for farmers to accommodate because their margins are either impossibly slender or simply nonexistent.

I have to say the NFU laid out clearly and in commendable detail the situation for the debate this week but the more one examines what it is saying, the more it becomes clear that merely talking about the problem isn’t enough and that we have to step in with some serious, practical support – as would any government keen to retain a national agriculture sector.

Farmers are facing a perfect storm with soaring input prices on one hand and on the other a lack of seasonal labour to pick the crops. It is nothing short of scandalous that in the first half of this year alone some £22 million worth of fruit and vegetables were wasted because of the obstacles against engaging sufficient EU workers to pick them. And this when British families are crying out for affordable food and we are all becoming ever more aware of the need, in these turbulent times, to become more self-sufficient.

How can we justify the spectacle of lorry loads of foreign produce being trucked past fields where British crops lie rotting?

I hear the voices telling me that we should be encouraging British workers to sign up for the land army but such is the state of the labour market that there are, sadly, far more attractive employment opportunities around – as the dismal (no other word for it, sorry) failure of the NFU/ Defra ‘Pick for Britain’ initiative demonstrated.

At the very least we have to halt the tapering of direct support payments and keep them at their current level for as long as this situation pertains. I have no need to tell you that farmers in the EU are still receiving them (though even they are complaining that they are not sufficient) which in theory makes European production systems more resilient and well-equipped to ship produce here.

I have to ask, however, at what price.

Firstly, in terms of the higher relative cost to us because of the enfeebled state of sterling and secondly relating to the long-term, and most probably irreversible damage that will be inflicted on our own farming sector.

The first is probably manageable: exchange rates can go up as well as down. But the second is utterly unacceptable and it would be an act of the greatest economic folly to allow it to become reality.

Over to you.

> Farmers are facing a perfect storm with soaring input prices on one hand and on the other a lack of seasonal labour to pick the crops, warns Ian