Declining food production must end now, the NFU has warned at its annual conference.
President Tom Bradshaw told members of the farming union at the conference in Birmingham that a “resilient food system isn’t optional in a time of geopolitical uncertainty; it is a cornerstone to national security”.
Bradshaw said “investment in food production today guarantees food security tomorrow” which is intrinsically linked to farmers having the confidence and fiscal headroom to invest.
The NFU’s farmer confidence survey results show that short-term and mid-term farmer confidence remains low, with 64% of farmers and growers saying their profits are either declining or that their business may not survive.
“Investment in food production is critical to the nation’s future. Everyone – young or old, rural or urban – needs a resilient food system,” Bradshaw said. “Resilience means the ability to anticipate shocks, withstand the impact and recover stronger than before.
“Everything you see on the grocery shelf is underpinned by a farmer or by a grower so, yes, resilience means a supply chain where the burden of risk is shared, not just shouldered by price-taking farmers and growers,” he said.
He has called for a food strategy that sets clear ambitions and the delivery of the Food and Farming Board, set out in the Minette Batters review.
His concerns were echoed at the conference by Professor Tim Lang, emeritus professor of food policy at City St George’s University, who said “we are not getting the leadership on food security”.
He added: “The default position that others can feed us is hard-wired into the British state system and indeed into the nature of how aggressive capitalism works.”
Lang said other countries have “much more flexibility in their systems” and called for the UK to come into a new era for food preparedness, which would mean bringing back storage.
“We’ve got to build up more production here, not out of petty nationalism, but… it’s a crazy misuse of land not to do that,” he added.
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