Prime minister Rishi Sunak made a surprise appearance at last week’s NFU conference in Birmingham, alongside the whole Defra ministerial team. But NFU polling at the event showed the scale of farmer disillusionment with his government in this election year.
It is the first time since 2008 that a premier has addressed the NFU conference – the last to do so was Gordon Brown. Mr Sunak was keen to stress his support for farmers and rural communities and underlined that he heard the industry’s concerns over food security. He also understood that the post-Brexit policy changes were the biggest producers had faced in a generation, at the same time as geopolitical instability was raising their costs and market volatility – on top of more extreme weather.
Mr Sunak made three pledges. The first was that every penny of the £2.4 billion farm support package agreed under the CAP would be spent on agriculture – but there was no mention of any adjustment for inflation or any commitment beyond the present Parliament. Mr Sunak said he aimed to have at least 50% of farmers signed up to the new UK schemes. Secondly, he promised new steps to make the schemes simpler and more generous – starting with a minimum £2,000 management payment from this spring.
There would be £220 million in Farming Innovation Programme (FIP) and £70m under the Farm Technology and Equipment Fund. Services would be shaped around the needs of farmers, he said. However, it is not clear whether this is new funding or comes from the underspend of the existing farm support budget.
Thirdly, to drive food security there would be a new annual food security index, with a mandatory report to Parliament, and an annual Farm to Fork cross-industry summit meeting, following the inaugural one last year held under his premiership. There would be a £15m fund to reduce food wastage by redirecting out of spec farmgate food products to consumers rather than landfill.
Mr Sunak said new dairy contract arrangements to ensure fair supply chains were about to be announced, and the government was preparing to work on the pork and poultry supply chains too. The current administration would stand up for UK farm interests in trade deals, he concluded – it had recently walked away from Canadian negotiations over the issue of hormone treated beef.
In a question and answer session, Mr Sunak swerved any commitment to raise the farm support budget to at least £4.5 billion to compensate for inflation, or to say whether protecting higher UK production and animal welfare standards in trade negotiations would be in the Conservative party manifesto. But he said the UK is in discussions over breaking down barriers to trade with the EU through an SVS agreement and in avoiding regulatory divergence. In the longer term, he believed electronic authorisations would help remove trade frictions.