Australian rivals and Brexit barriers leave UK farmers on stony ground
Swapping their pastures for the concrete jungle, hundreds of Britain’s farmers will take off their wellies this week and head to a conference centre in central Birmingham for the annual shindig of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU).
Nearly 1,500 food producers will meet to discuss the “blueprint for the future” of British farming, against the backdrop of the biggest upheaval in a generation in agriculture, following the UK’s departure from the EU and the pandemic, and amid discussions about future land use in the face of the climate crisis.
Farmers insist Covid only increased consumers’ appetite to “buy British”, especially at a time when global supply chains were disrupted. But the past two years have shown it’s not always easy for food producers to get their produce from field to fork.
The industry is grappling with worker shortages following Brexit and Covid, when many European workers went back to their home countries. A shortage of workers has already resulted in unpicked fruit being left to rot in fields, and a cull of healthy pigs on farms because of a lack of staff at slaughterhouses. An estimated 35,000 animals have been killed and won’t enter the food chain.
All this is taking place before farmers feel the impact of the UK’s post-Brexit trade deals with food-producing nations Australia and New Zealand, which will see their exporters theoretically able to send limitless amounts of lamb, beef and dairy produce to the UK within 15 years.
These are bitter pills to swallow for an organisation which backed staying in the EU before the Brexit vote.
While the focus of the conference will be on the future, and life beyond the EU’s subsidy scheme – known as the common agricultural policy (CAP) and worth £3bn a year to UK
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