British farmers must be paid better for growing food, says agriculture tsar

Telegraph

03-05-2025

Farmers should make more money from growing food to lessen their reliance on green schemes like rewilding, Downing Street's new agriculture tsar has said.
Baroness Batters said ministers needed to address the 'balance' between the income farms receive for their produce and subsidies for environmental work.
Writing for The Sunday Telegraph, she warned it was now more profitable to use land for nature projects or hosting solar panels than for growing food.
Lady Batters, the former president of the National Farmers' Union, was recently appointed to lead a Government review into how to make farming more profitable.
She said the review was looking into how little farmers made from selling their produce when compared with the subsidies they received for nature schemes.
'One of the long-term and growing challenges to farming is that land is often more profitable for anything else, other than producing food,' she wrote.
'The previous government put in place environmental targets, which this government is committed to. My aim in leading the farming profitability review is to ensure there is balance between delivering on these targets and food production.'
She said the review would 'first and foremost' treat farms as businesses which needed to be able to generate greater profits in order to survive.
Lady Batters said concerns over supermarkets, including how little they pay farmers and how long it takes chains to honour invoices, was a key issue.
She said some retailers can take as long as three months to reimburse suppliers, adding: 'This is totally wrong and is one of the many things that need to change.'
The baroness added that farmers 'carry the risk and majority of the cost in producing the food on our supermarket shelves' but receive a 'minuscule' amount of the returns.
The remarks raise the prospect that her review will recommend that the Government should legislate to force supermarkets to settle invoices more quickly.
Lady Batters warned that, without a change to make food production more profitable, many family farms risked going under, which would harm the countryside.
It could also mean the UK would have to import more food, which is less environmentally friendly and would leave the country more exposed to global events.
'Without profit, we'll not only have fewer farmers but less investment in our farms,' she wrote.
Steve Reed, the Environment Secretary, asked Lady Batters to conduct the review, the first of its kind into farming profitability.
We need to put the 'great' back into British food
By Baroness Batters
There are many ways in which farming is different to any other sector of our economy. For a start farmers and their families often live at their place of work, on the farm. There is no shutting the office door at the end of the day or at the weekend. If you have livestock, as I do, you're effectively on call 24/7.
One of the long-term and growing challenges to farming is that land is often more profitable for anything else, other than producing food.
Currently, farmers producing milling wheat to make our bread or growing malting barley to make beer must first carry the cost of buying the seed and fertiliser. Then they must prepare the ground and invest in the health of the soil. Once the crop is drilled, there's a wait of six to nine months before the crop can be harvested.
After testing the soil on my farm last autumn, we found the soil pH in some places to be low, and my agronomist advised applying lime to restore the pH balance. For a reasonably average-sized field, this cost us £2,500. We planted the barley in March, but despite considerable investment, and at the mercy of ever-increasing weather events, there are no guarantees on the quality of the grain, or the price I'll receive.
In a worst-case scenario, I might not get my money back and could even make a loss. In 2024 some land never got planted because it was so wet. Fields of potatoes and sugar beet ended up being left to rot in the ground because the soil was too waterlogged to harvest them.
Many things need to change
The farmer carries the risk and majority of the cost in producing the food on our supermarket shelves. Despite this up-front cost, they frequently receive a minuscule proportion of the profit at point of sale.
Supermarkets on the other hand can sell the fresh produce within a week, receiving payment immediately at point of purchase. Yet it can take 90 days for them to pay the farmer. This is totally wrong and is one of the many things that need to change.
Environment Secretary Steve Reed's decision to ask me to lead a review of farming profitability is a first. No previous Defra minister has asked this fundamental question before. When I met with him recently, I was pleased to be given license to operate independently, alongside access, to engage with other government departments.
I've spent the first couple of weeks in post, working with my team on themes for engagement. I plan to convene conversations across all sectors and land areas to gather evidence in the early part of the summer. I'll have six months to write the review and provide recommendations for the short, mid, and long-term.
An exciting challenge
As a former president of the National Farmers' Union and a crossbench peer, I'm keen to extend my reach and will take into consideration wide-ranging views from across the sector. Recently, while talking to my neighbouring tenant farmer Edward, I asked him what he wanted me to achieve from this review: 'put the 'great' back into British food' was his response.
I couldn't agree more, growing our market share across food retail, exports, out of home and public procurement for schools, hospitals, prisons, and the military is fundamental to farming profit.
I'm under no illusions as to the challenges of solving farming profitability, but I'm genuinely excited to be given the opportunity to try and make a difference to the people who not only feed the nation but are the bedrock of our rural economy and the only way we can deliver the scale of ambition for nature.
The previous government put in place environmental targets, which this government is committed to. My aim in leading the farming profitability review is to ensure there is balance between delivering on these targets and food production.
Without profitable farming there will be no farming productivity gains or biodiversity benefits. The scale of the challenge is enormous but first and foremost this review recognises that farms are businesses.
Without profit we'll not only have fewer farmers but less investment in our farms. And in turn this will drive us to import more of the food that we can and should be producing here.