The National Farmers’ Union (NFU) president Minette Batters has warned that “we’re seeing the lowest levels of tomatoes and cucumbers produced since records began in 1985.”
Speaking with BBC Radio 4 yesterday (30 January), Minette said that the more often farmers produce less food, the more that it drives further cost inflation.
She said that decisions of what to plant “will have been made effectively at the beginning of the autumn period last summer, when gas prices were at their most volatile,” adding that prices were 650% higher than back in 2019.
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“It is the volitality that is driving a lot of this and to date the cost inflation that farmers and growers are facing has absolutley been dwarfed by any price increases.”
In December, a report by food and farming charity, Sustain looked into five everyday amounts of food including apples, cheese, beef burgers, carrots and bread, finding UK farmers are often left with less than 1p on produce and see less than 1% of the profit.
Minette said farmers and growers need incentives to give them “the confidence to keep producing and not contract.”
She added that at the moment, “if you’ve got a glasshouse it’s been easier to mothball that and ultimately have it for storage than spend 50% of the cost of your business on the price of gas to heat it, so this is the challenge.”
This comes as McCain is set to invest £35 million in its farmers to help them manage rising costs and the current environmental threats such as drought, heatwaves and floods, as well as price increases across fertiliser and energy costs which has resulted in unprecedented on-farm inflation for potato growers.
