UK farmers not being paid a fair price, may lead to severe food crisis
Critics claim shoppers will face higher prices as per new plans
Supermarket shelves have emptied this year, in part due to soaring costs for farmers
British farmers are being undermined and this may seriously become detrimental to UK’s food security. Britain may even have to turn to India to prevent shortages on the British Isles of onions, apples and even potatoes.
An incoming Labour administration would expect big grocery chains to show “more flex” and offer more support when negotiating food prices with UK producers. This warning of looming shortage is being given by the present Shadow Environment Secretary.
“The Government have essentially outsourced our food security to the major supermarkets instead of taking responsibility to make sure of domestic food security in the UK itself. Some supermarket chains were guilty of “poor practice” and bought from abroad rather than supporting UK farmers.
However, supermarkets insist that it is due to overseas purchases that is keeping prices down for shoppers as British farmers demand very high prices for their products.
The managing director of Loddington Farm, holds uprooted apple tree stumps in an orchard as he prepares to move away from apple growing.
This year, the British Govt has repeatedly denied that the shortages in fruits and vegetables were a result of market failure and declined to intervene.
The “ultra-free-market ideology”, of Brexit Britain has led to a “weird supermarket culture” for a “unique” system of fixed-price contracts with farmers that mean there is no “effective market” for their produce.
Experts believe that this lack of flexibility have left farmers with no compensations for rising input costs. Thus retailers were not paying enough to farmers even to break even.
Said a major apple grower that for 2022’s crop to break even, he needed supermarkets to pay him 20 per cent more than the previous year for each giant wooden crate of apples. Supermarkets offered just 0.8 per cent more.
The Govt says that if supermarkets are forced to help farmers then the rising cost may just be dumped on the consumers leading to chaos in a already battered country.
“Forcing supermarkets to raise prices on consumers for the sake of subsidy-hungry farmers makes little sense,” said Maxwell Marlow, research director at the Adam Smith Institute, a free market think-thank.
However others believe that the Super market chains make enough already to soak up extra costs without passing them on to shoppers.
Govt was looking at various options including potentially setting up a national body tasked with overseeing food security. This could include giving it the powers of the Groceries Code Adjudicator, which currently regulates the supermarket-farmer relationship.
Presently farmers supplying supermarkets are often left with less than 1 per cent of profit – tiny amounts of money.
Farmers carry much of the risk and work in difficult conditions to put food on tables, while expected to look after nature and help tackle climate change. They need a fair deal from the supermarkets.
Britishers are now getting concerned about trade deals, which Govt has signed with Australia and New Zealand, that have proved deeply controversial. British farmers, fear they will be undercut by overseas meat, produced to lower environmental standards. The UK is also believed to have made concessions to Canada on agricultural trade in order to join a major Pacific Trade Agreement the CPTPP.
Worried about the competition from abroad being faced by British farmers who are unable to face superior competition, some British politicians still having “ Imperial “ hangover have even spewed venom on Asian countries stating “British farmers livelihoods are threatened by cheap, low standard produce from other countries”. Though these same Shylocks are so eager to sign Free Trade Agreements with India and China.
The Empty Shelves
Brexit Britain needs to rebalance the relationship between the farmers and the supermarkets and continue to maintain full shelves. Otherwise this is just the start of problems leading to into shortages and food inflation.
This will ultimately lead to independence of British Occupied Scotland and British Occupied Northern Ireland.
Critics say that Govt should extended the business energy price guarantee to fertiliser producers and to farmers to ensure that greenhouses in Britain were not shutting down production when shortages started appearing.
Apart from govt created labour shortage, the British Govt has even torn up the old EU agricultural subsidy scheme and has displayed complete indifference to the closure of 7,000 agricultural business in the last four years.
