Starmer is about to hammer the final nail in British farming's coffin

Telegraph

19-05-2025

Farmers and fishermen are right to be worried they are being sold out by the Government. Seeing car workers in Labour constituencies favoured above rural residents in Tory and Liberal ones doesn't make it any easier to swallow: the feeling that we are being sold out to proffer international trade deals is inescapable.
British wheat futures have already fallen on the news that 1.4 billion litres of bioethanol can come here annually duty free, the same quantity that we currently produce domestically. That may transfer jobs from the North of England to America's Trump voting corn-belt. If, as they have threatened, the UK's two bioethanol plants in Hull and Teesside close, then 2m tonnes of feed wheat grown by arable farmers in the North will have to go elsewhere.
Livestock farmers will also be hit, as the main by-product of ethanol production is animal feed. That will now become more expensive, making it harder for our beef and pig farmers to compete globally. The other by-product is carbon dioxide, something we are short of in the UK. It's badly needed by the NHS.
It's an example of how Britain's agri-industrial base could be eroded if government policy moves too far from protecting domestic production towards free trade, as happened with nearly fatal consequences prior to WW2 when we were ill prepared to withstand Hitler's U-Boat blockade. Starmer's Labour manifesto slogan: 'Food security is national security' now looks hollow.
Farming unions have so far based many of their arguments on lurid scare stories about chlorinated chicken and hormone treated beef. These concerns have been answered by the government as both categories are specifically banned in the treaty. And some American ranchers have started producing hormone-free beef for British markets.
But until we have transparent food labelling, particularly for ready-meal ingredients, and proper customs checks, we cannot have much confidence in the food standards of imported produce. In 2013 we had horsemeat on supermarket shelves masquerading as beef. And while many overseas farmers still don't have to tag cattle or keep whole-life medicine records there is little hope of food traceability. We are only one imported meat sandwich away from another foot and mouth epidemic.
It is very hard to argue against free trade when it leads to lower food prices for all. What everyone should be focusing on is whether free trade is fair trade: the terms of trade between countries and whether British farmers' competitiveness is being unfairly hampered by the Government. We are farming with one hand tied behind our backs. This point was made, ironically enough, by US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on her visit to the UK last week.
Subsidy removal in the UK puts British farmers at a disadvantage to their EU and US counterparts, who still have generous subsidies or a federal crop insurance programme to fall back on. We also have to comply with far more expensive red tape. And overseas farmers are not having to plan for a penal inheritance tax that would see the government take 20 per cent of the value of their farms and herds every generation through the Chancellor's family farm tax.
On Thursday, the influential Westminster Environment Food and Rural Affairs Committee, dominated by Labour MPs, asked the Chancellor to look again at her inheritance tax plans. She should listen.
Jamie Blackett is a farmer and the author of Red Rag to a Bull and Land of Milk and Honey