Farmers throwing in the towel amid soaring costs and labour shortages and falling domestic production of some foods have resulted in repeated gaps on British supermarket shelves – much to shoppers’ chagrin.
UK agriculture has had a torrid few years navigating the fallout from Brexit and the pandemic at a time when squeezed consumers are reassessing what they can afford to put in their shopping baskets.
Little wonder, then, that the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), which represents the interests of about 55,000 farmers across England and Wales, has heralded the very existence of the food summit being convened by Rishi Sunak this week at 10 Downing Street as a victory.
The impetus for the event is clear: recent years have brought rolling crises, from pigs stuck on farms because of abattoir labour shortages, to millions of pounds’ worth of crops left to rot in fields amid a lack of seasonal workers, to egg producers packing up during a record outbreak of avian flu.
This year saw the NFU report a 40-year low in domestic salad production, while egg production fell to its weakest level in nine years in 2022.
Against this backdrop, Tuesday’s gathering will bring together farmers’ representatives and food and retail trade bodies, along with some of the bosses of Britain’s largest supermarkets, to talk about the government’s goal of boosting cooperation across the supply chain and supporting the food sector’s resilience.
The exact guest list remains under wraps, giving way to speculation that the television presenter and celebrity farmer Jeremy Clarkson, whose attempts to grow food on his Cotswolds farm Diddly Squat have been documented in a TV series, has also received an invitation to No 10.
The NFU’s president, Minette Batters, has been pushing the prime minister to chair a food summit, which she wants to be made annual, ever since he promised to establish the event during the 2022 Conservative party leadership race.
The union has said it wants “action not words”, calling on ministers to commit to securing the proportion of food produced domestically at the current 60%, along with introducing a statutory duty to report production levels. It is also asking the government to use powers in the Agriculture Act to make supply chains fairer.
Many farmers were already finding it tough before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine saw a surge in the cost of their essentials, known as the three Fs – feed, fuel and fertiliser – forcing many to produce food at a loss.
Cynics say that stubbornly high inflation – partly driven by food and drink prices rising by 19.1% in the year to March, according to the Office for National Statistics – may have put pressure on the government to hold the meeting, particularly after the prime minister made halving inflation one of his five promises to achieve by the end of the year.
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The Conservatives will also be well aware that Labour has stepped on to what is traditionally Tory territory. The opposition’s leader, Keir Starmer, promised the NFU’s annual conference in February that under his government, half of all food bought by the public sector would be produced locally and sustainably.
The problems of reliance on foreign imports for salad items like tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce, brought to the UK from warmer climes during the cold months, was also exposed earlier this year, when poor weather in Spain and Morocco led to gaps on shelves and supermarkets imposing limits on how many shoppers could buy.
Experts have blamed food shortages on the government’s approach, described as “leave it to Tesco et al”, relying on supermarkets’ supply chains to keep shelves stocked, rather than helping suppliers with rising costs.
Few of those attending Tuesday’s summit will be in any doubt about the pressures in the food supply chain. Producers, processors and retailers alike have had margins squeezed amid rising costs and a tight labour market. However, it is not clear what can be achieved by bringing together groups with, arguably, competing interests. All will want to keep their slice of the pie.
One way of convincing farmers not to quit would be for consumers to pay more for their food – but few will find that suggestion palatable in a cost of living crisis, let alone a prime minister looking at his chances of re-election.