Batters urges Sunak to lead the way on food security
Minette Batters (second right) at the NFU Council meeting © MAG/Philip Case NFU president Minette Batters has urged prime minister Rishi Sunak to set the example for European countries and place food security at the heart of domestic agricultural policy.
Speaking at this week’s NFU Council meeting in Stoneleigh, Warwickshire, Mrs Batters said the war in Ukraine and other geopolitical tensions had highlighted the importance of national food security.
In a reference to Russia’s war against Ukraine, Mrs Batters said wheat was clearly being used as a “weapon of war” and there was a need for governments to “pivot and change” on food and farming policy.
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Mrs Batters said the baseline price of a therm of gas was 115% higher now than it was in 2019, which was also having a big impact on fertiliser and energy costs on farms.
It was therefore no surprise that food price inflation remained high, she noted. “It’s not going to change. Globally, potentially, it is going to get much worse and much trickier.”
The NFU president argued that the EU Commission’s Farm to Fork strategy, which aims to achieve the “green deal” target of 25% of agricultural land under organic farming by 2030, was looking “massively out of date with the challenges that the world is now facing of feeding a growing population”.
Mr Sunak has reportedly agreed to host a UK food security summit at 10 Downing Street in the second quarter of 2023. However, a date has yet to be confirmed.
Mrs Batters said 18 months out from a general election at maximum, the NFU believed the Conservative government was “at a pivotal point” in its plans for future agricultural policy.
“Which road are they going to go down?” she asked. “Are they going to keep going full-blown down the environmental route, which, effectively, is to deliver net zero? We produce less food.
“Or, are they going to pivot into where we have been all the time, working up a policy solution: how do we produce more food on less land with less inputs? That has got to be the focus.”