‘Completely contradictory’: NFU leader attacks UK farming policy
The government has shown a “total lack of understanding of how food production works”, introduced “completely contradictory policies” on farming, and risks “repeatedly running into crises” through the lack of a post-Brexit plan for UK farming, the leading representative of British farmers will say today.
Minette Batters, president of the National Farmers’ Union, will make a scathing attack on ministers’ failures, unprecedented in recent memory in its ferocity from a farming leader.
Her withering assessment of the government’s actions reflects widespread anger and alarm among many sections of the UK’s farming and food production industries, one of the country’s biggest manufacturing industries and employers. Farmers have suffered from plunging exports and reams of new red tape owing to Brexit, staff shortages as EU seasonal workers have left, and the prospect of floods of cheap low-quality imports after post-Brexit trade deals.
Batters will highlight the fate of the pig industry – which is facing near-collapse under rising costs and staffing shortages – and warn that similar disasters will hit other branches of farming unless the government acts.
She will tell the NFU conference in Birmingham: “We need a plan that pre-empts crises, rather than repeatedly runs into them … this country needs a strategy and a clear vision for what we expect from British farming. We have completely contradictory government policies. It is raising the bar for environmental standards at home but pursuing trade deals which support lower standards overseas. It is claiming to value domestic food production but making it difficult to find workers to harvest or process it. It is stating there are many export opportunities for British food but failing to
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