The year 2022 proved to be a turbulent one for domestic politics, against a background of geopolitical disruption stemming from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russia’s military aggression turbocharged the inflationary pressure on energy and food commodities that had been growing since the previous year – CF Industries had shut one of its UK fertiliser factories – at Ince – in September 2021 in response to rapidly rising natural gas costs.
With farm input inflation currently running at over 30%, but retail food prices at 10%, there is clearly more consumer pain in the pipeline. Farmers need clear signals from government to invest in their businesses to avoid a drop in production, while the supply trade needs unambiguous policy pointers that it can cascade to farm customers – but there is little sign of either.
There have been three UK prime ministers and three Defra secretaries of state so far this year, with a disastrous effect on policy continuity. Worse, long serving minister George Eustice – who lost his post in the brief Truss administration – has since turned on his former colleagues, denouncing the quality of the trade deals signed while he was a member of the cabinet.
And the post-Brexit agricultural policy in England is a mess. Six years on from the Referendum, Basic Payment Scheme monies are being phased out with no settled shape for the Environmental Land Management scheme to support the government’s vision of public money for public goods. At least the devolved Scots and Welsh administrations have delayed the cut in BPS value.
Meanwhile, business-facing government departments and the Home Office battle over migrant worker numbers.
None of these factors are conducive to farmer confidence to invest in their businesses, especially when added to inflationary input costs, rising interest rates and growing animal disease – avian influenza threatening to become endemic while pig farmers fear lax import controls at the UK border when African swine fever is moving westwards across the continent.
Like prime minister Sunak, new Defra minister Therese Coffey has had a cautious start. But she needs to start convincing the industry that she is on top of her in-tray, overflowing as it is with declining monogastric livestock numbers, shortages of eggs and protected crops and the labour crisis affecting production and processing sectors of the agrifood chain.
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The year 2022 proved to be a turbulent one for domestic politics, against a background of geopolitical disruption stemming from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s military aggression turbocharged the inflationary pressure on energy and food commodities that had…
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