What Brexit Means for UK Farming - and Your Shopping Basket
2020 put a spotlight on the precarity of our ability to dash to Tesco for a 17p banana. Wartime rationing is a distant memory for most, so having grown up in peacetime and prosperity, our access to a reliable food source gently wobbled for the first time.
I woke up to my complacency, maybe even entitlement when queuing outside Sainsbury’s in March 2019. Overnight, shelves were stripped of old faithful fusilli, and passive-aggressive loo roll disputes broke out. Before Christmas, freight out of the UK was blocked by European countries after the emergence of the super spreader Covid-19 strain, triggering concerns over fresh food shortages.
The agriculture and food supply chain that feeds the nation is likely much more complicated than most of us imagine. Many of us are city-dwellers with laptop jobs, whipping up twitter storms over hummus shortages, largely disconnected from the industry that sustains us. Compounded by the stress of Covid-19 and the threat of a No-Deal Brexit, British farmers faced a disastrous 2020 harvest.
How will agriculture fare in 2021? Can we adapt?
Self-sufficiency
As an island with a rapidly growing population owing to immigration trends and other factors, and high population density, some experts say we will never be able to reach food self-sufficiency again. According to Global Food Security, UK food self-sufficiency currently stands at 52%, but the figure is rising due to the increasing population and changing demand. Surviving on produce produced domestically, without imports, we would run out by August. Our food self-sufficiency has dropped dramatically from its recent high of 82% during the Thatcher years.
82% of all imported food comes from the EU, hence endless chlorinated chicken discussions last year. Speaking on Newsnight in December, Minette Batters, President of the National Farmers Union (NFU) told Emily Maitliss that 90% of all our exports go to the EU.
The agricultural industry most reliant on EU trade, lamb farming count an extraordinary ’89% of all sheep-meat exports [find] their way to the EU’.
Evidently, not only are we reliant on imports to feed the nation, exports contribute significantly to the economy.
Saying goodbye to subsidies
As of the 1st January, we left the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the EU’s agricultural subsidies scheme. The CAP constitutes around 40% of the EU’s total budget, providing British farmers with billions of pounds over the years. It is by no means a perfect system and is considered to cause overproduction, waste, and ecologically hostile farming techniques.
Farmers are facing the loss of the CAP subsidy many rely on. Seemingly unconvinced by the government’s pledges to support farmers through the transition away from CAP subsidies, Jeremy Clarkson laid into the left-wing press in a Sunday Times Magazine column last month. Yes, billionaire farmers like James Dyson will lose a subsidy they ‘spray into Val d’Isère’s cheese fondues, but the vast majority have to burn their children at night to keep warm’.
Minette Batters told BBC Radio 4 that it has been clear for years that a no-deal Brexit would have been catastrophic, and luckily we avoided it just at the end. Yes, the recent Brexit deal feels like a breath of air in a year where almost everything was going wrong.
We know that no tariffs will apply to goods between the EU and UK in the foreseeable future, although there is no assurance that things will remain the same.
We currently have one of the lowest food prices in Europe, but some of the highest housing prices offset this. Any change can lead to an increase in food cost, which could seriously impact families struggling through the Covid-19 recession that awaits us this year.
Ecological reform: is there a silver lining lurking here?
Minette Batters says “British farming can be central to green recovery. We have a golden opportunity to place food security at the centre of our food system and become a global leader in sustainable food production.”
One of the core qualms with the CAP was that it encouraged pesticide use and other harmful industrial farming techniques. Green issues are at the fore of the government’s November Brexit agricultural plan, detailing farming reforms and moving away from EU grants. There are grants for planting trees, incentives for ecologically sound farming practices and support for protecting hedgerows and copses.
Noble, but a little green-washed, as the woodland felling along the construction line of the ultimate eco-horror show HS2 undermines this eco-friendly message- a sapling plantation cannot quickly replace an ancient forest’s ecosystem. Trust is not exactly inspired in this righteous Brexit green scheme.
There is scope long-term for genuine positive reform of UK agriculture
Recent trends in the way we think about our food, from awareness of animal welfare, rewilding, provenance, and seasonality could open up the market for ecologically sound British produce.
It feels a little trite and naive to wax lyrical about veganism when farmers’ livelihoods could be at stake. Still, theoretically, there is a business incentive for UK farmers for pursuing eco-agriculture, alongside the hopefully positive impact it will have on biodiversity and yield.
Speaking to Countryfile, Professor Tim Lang was confident that we could increase self-sufficiency, but as thousands of acres are currently dedicated to growing animal feed, “we’ll have to cut eating meat down to once a week. We have to rebuild our horticulture and put more money into primary food production. There has to be a shift in how we grow our food.” To expect this Tory government will support farmers through this transition seems unrealistic.
As a consumer, far removed from the farming sector, what can we do? Where we can support local, sustainable British products. No doubt preaching to the choir here, but we can eat meat conscientiously, and much less (but sorry, vegans- lamb is on the menu this year). There is the chance to slash methane production, and free up land that has previously been dedicated to producing Animal feed.
Last year, having recently embodied the Covid cliché and obsessed over my sourdough starter, I asked my father, who runs a farm in Buckinghamshire, where the wheat crop goes. When he told me that the harvest went to animal feed factories in Northamptonshire, I realised the depth of my own disconnect from agriculture and the land where I had grown up.
Eat seasonally, and locally, if you can. We need a serious overhaul, beyond what change consumers can bring if we want UK agriculture to survive and possibly thrive in the coming years.
Written by Laura Stewart-Liberty
Laura is a Bristol languages graduate turned Journalism Master’s student, currently based in Buckinghamshire. Freelance writer.