Farmers’ livelihoods will be destroyed unless the UK government intervenes with better support for the beleaguered industry, NFU president Minette Batters has warned.
The NFU Council meeting in Warwickshire on Tuesday (26 April) was dominated by farmer concerns about the soaring cost of inputs, frustration over access to labour, and misgivings about the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI).
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Farmers at the meeting criticised Defra’s SFI plans and said the cost of delivering the scheme was far greater than what it would pay.
Mrs Batters said there was not enough detail and it would not provide enough profit for farm businesses.
“One of the main reasons we called for a delay to SFI was the inability to deliver it,” she told the meeting.
“[Defra secretary] George Eustice has said there will be more resource if the take-up is there. I genuinely do not believe we will get 70% of farmers on that platform because the detail is not there and the viability of that scheme is simply not there.”
Critical areas
Mrs Batters said there were three other critical policy areas the government needed to take action on: food security, a food strategy that includes an export plan, and immigration.
“If we cannot get a statutory underpinning of food security, I can only think that this government is focused on putting farmers out of production,” she said.
The government also needed to unlock the full potential for British produce to be sold abroad.
It is the NFU’s ambition to grow agri-food exports by 30% by the end of 2030, bringing the total value to £33bn.
On immigration, Mrs Batters said she was “saddened beyond belief” to see sectors contracting in farming and hospitality because they did not have the workforce, and “we need a radical rethink on immigration”.
Rising costs for all
NFU livestock board chairman Richard Findlay said he was concerned about the availability of forage for beef and sheep farmers going into winter, in light of the sky-high fertiliser prices.
“Quite a lot of grassland farmers have not used as much fertiliser and a significant number have not used any,” he said.
In the arable sector, there were reports of growers taking action this spring to build their business resilience in light of the soaring fertiliser costs.
Matt Culley, the NFU’s combinable crops board chairman, said: “Some are planning to reduce N this spring and carry over cheaper fertiliser into next year and mitigate next year’s fertiliser prices.”
Poultry board chairman James Mottershead warned that increases in feed, energy and labour costs were forcing more poultry producers to consider their future in the industry.
Paul Tompkins, vice-chair of the dairy board, acknowledged the small increase in the retail price of milk, but said retailers were happy to see if the costs crisis would turn out to be a short-term issue for the sector, riding on the “dogged determination of farmers to keep producing milk”.
