This is an interesting article by Warwick Lightfoot, Director of Research and Head of Economics and Social Policy at Policy Exchange. Unsurprisingly, from the Policy Exchange, it is strong on the view that leaving the EU will increase competition and therefore allow food prices to drop. This would be good news for consumers – that means you and me! That has to be possible, but it all depends on what strings we are bound by in the Brexit deal.
However, this view is a welcome counter to the arguments which all seem to look at things from the point of view of producers (farmers) and food retailers rather than the consumer. The farming lobby is so strong that it seems to dominate the discussion, such as it is, about the future of agricultural payments from the taxpayer to the producers, post-Brexit. Rarely if ever does the piper get such a dominant say in how much he or she should be paid and on what conditions.
A recent House of Lords report on agriculture does say in its summary ‘In the long term the UK has an opportunity to review and improve its agriculture, environment, and food policy, better meeting the needs of the agriculture sector, the environment and consumers‘ although it is not clear to me why the environmental improvements have to be in the long term – we should get on with them now!
No doubt, Defra brains are just tweaking their farming strategy in order to ensure that this is the case, and further strengthening their environment strategy to close any cracks. Yeh, right!
We should be having a great debate on the future of farming and that debate should involve everyone who eats, not just those few who produce food. The general election campaign is getting in the way of many such important discussions and the danger is that a rampant Tory government will not bother with any discussion after the general election.
Can we expect any clarity in the party manifestos on the future for our wildlife and our countryside? It’s a month until we get to choose at the ballot box.
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Prices are already rising due to wrak currency. Policy Exchange is just one more spin outfit smoke screening the ludicrous #brexitshambles we’re in.
Do we really need food to be cheaper? Won’t this just mean poorer food quality, lower environmental standards and crueler animal husbandry?
Yes we need food to be cheaper. Or wages and benefits to rise. Pick one.
However.
This particular method of (allegedly) bringing food prices down will 100% guaranteed give us the poorer food quality, lower environmental standards and crueler animal husbandry you fear.
There are ways to achieve cheaper food that won’t bring us all that, but they involve closer cooperation with our fellow European countries and also mean tackling inequality and poverty on a systemic level. Can’t see the Tories going for that, not when there is quick, dirty, and cruel on offer as an option.
I think the 5-10 years post-Brexit will see more changes in UK agriculture than in the previous 30 years. Larger arable and dairy farms (especially those in the liquid milk-market) under the stewardship of technically accomplished farmers should prosper but I don’t much fancy the prospects of smaller beef and sheep farms though, especially those on marginal land.
A WTO-based Brexit (which imo is now marginally odds-on) will prove disastrous for those selling lamb into the EU. I can’t see how many sheep farms could survive more than 12-months of ad valorem trade tariffs being applied to their biggest export market. Of course British consumers may turn their backs on NZ and Irish lamb imports and decide to pay more in order to support British producers – unlikely though if they are feeling the pinch on their budgets elsewhere.
Beef producers probably have more to fear from the likely trade deal with the US which looks set to open the floodgates to cheap US hormone-treated beef, a product that the EU placed blanket restrictions on being imported. I can’t see a cap-in-hand UK Govt. being able to continue this ban, not when the US will have the whip-hand in the trade negotiations, and from the UK Govt’s perspective farming will be a minor consideration. Of course there will still be a market (domestic and export) for higher quality premium grass-fed beef, but a limited one at that.
This might result in de-facto re-wilding of some upland areas – although I have this nagging suspicion that we might see the reintroduction of headage payments. That would fit in with the regressive policies of the current Govt.
I’m given to understand that WTO rules may prohibit the inception of PES type farm support as under WTO rules farm support can only be paid on an income foregone basis which favours existing models – but don’t take my word for it!
Sorry for the doom and gloom, but whichever way I look at it the whole debacle looks like a dogs breakfast. No wonder the NFU were so firmly in favour of remaining in the EU.
Ernest – many thanks for this.
I can’t see an increase in rewilding uplands under the continental model of flight from the land. They don’t have grouse shooters buying up every scrap of the uplands to wreck even worse than sheep or cattle farming ever did. Hill farms going broke in the UK will just lead to more land snatched up for shooting, at least until that bubble bursts too.
Couple of points.
Firstly, I can’t really see grouse shooters rushing to buy the bracken dominated fells of Cumbria or mountains of North Wales.
Secondly, is land managed for deer stalking any more ecologically impoverished than many of the sheep-wrecked upland? I doubt it somehow.
Thirdly, selling common land on which other parties have grazing rights isn’t particularly straightforward is it?
I fear your doom and gloom is justified Ernest. The government’s apparent determination to walk away fro the EU with no deal will make us easy pickings for Trump’s negotiators who will have little interest in agreeing to environmental, health and safety or social protections that we may wish for (and with Liam Fox leading the negotiations from our side I don’t imagine there will be any push for such protections anyway). I fear we are being hustled down a path to a low tax, low wage, low regulation economy that may be lucrative for international corporations but not very beneficial to the environment or to much of the public.
Food quality will be lower, because we’ll be forced to accept American junk as part of the bend us over the barrel trade deal to finally have US industry wipe away all UK competitors. The EU protected and supported a lot of marginal UK food producers (and many other types of industry) using stringent safety and quality legislation, with that gone…
Beef in particular is going to take a big hit, we’re going to see something like the mad cow crisis all over again from that. No amount of blaming it on badgers will be able to hide it either.
Its time we killed the ‘lower food prices are good’ myth once and for all before it destroys our environment, our domestic agriculture and our health. The reality is far from the superficial appearances: farming looks big if you’re a conservationist, but its being squeezed to the limits by the food industry – a few huge corporations locked in a to the death stock market struggle, with the many thousands of small farming businesses completely at their mercy. This is not a functioning market.
Add to that the simple facts that agriculture in the UK can’t ever compete in a global market because our growth rates (that’s the plants, not the economy) are lower than further south and all our costs from land to labour are higher. Add in the fact that all our northern competitors are subsidising their farming – none more so than that beacon of free trade, the USA.
And further – food as a proportion of household expenditure has fallen and fallen and food poverty has everything to do with welfare policy, almost nothing to do with food price. But the food industry has worked hard to push up their take – the more processed our food the higher the mark up and the longer the shelf life, the more the additives, including the ones that make us want to eat more, and they’ve done a great job of persuading us that we want ‘convenience’. Warwick Lightfoot doesn’t tell us how prices will come down, but bearing in mind where he’s coming from its likely to involve de-regulation which equals hormones and dodgy GM as part of the great Trump trade deal.
farming is different. Regardless of globalisation, does it make sense to abandon our own farming ? It doesn’t need to produce all our food (as the ‘food security’ lobby would like to suggest) but surely we should produce a fair proportion ? The big opportunity now is to create a land management that aims to optimise the things we need – remembering always that you can import food and timber, water is rather more difficult, floods happen where they happen and nowhere else and to treat nature deficit disorder in both children and adults we need nature right on our doorsteps, not 100 miles away.
Left to itself, there is only one reaction from British farming – intensify but in reality UK farming has as much idea about its future as the Government has about Brexit.
A report stated that every £1 support on farming returns £7.40.
What is bad about that.
Have you read the NFU commissioned-report that you allude to Dennis? http://www.nfuonline.com/assets/93419
It’s not terrible clear quite how the claimed £46 billion contribution to the economy links back to support payments is it? Or how would many of the claimed outputs be affected by a reduction or withdrawal of support? Countryside recreation being a good example.
Either way, the Govt’s continued reluctance to commit to farm support post-2020 must be very worrying for many farmers whose livelihood’s depend on subsidies.
PS – One farmer who read the report before me commented that in his view the report actually made the case for the removal of support payments..
Whatever people say the fact is in the Uk food is ridiculously cheap.
Lots of people go out of an evening and willingly spend £50 which would probably almost be the same amount they would spend on food for a week.
Bloody ridiculous moaners.