Calls are afoot for an ‘early warning system’, to safeguard Britain’s food security. The call came from NFU president Peter Kendall, speaking at the recent Royal Show.
Kendall told a media breakfast summit that what he evisioned would be ‘somewhat like what happens when the Bank Of England misses an inflation target.’ The system would ‘ensure it was capable of responding to whatever the nation’s needs might be, in terms of food and renewable energy production,’ a system being based on one or more indicators of the productive capacity of British farming, such as the UK’s share of EU production in different sectors.
Kendall stressed this was not an argument for the government to intervene in agricultural markets. But, in an increasingly uncertain world market environment, it would be essential that farming was in a position to respond to whatever mix of food and renewable energy needs the country might have at any given time.
“I’d like to see a change in some of the messages coming out from the government in general,” Kendall said. “We definitely saw changes from Margaret Beckett’s time to David Miliband’s.” He highlighted productive farming and how farming was central to the department of Defra.
“I envisage an indicator like Britain’s share of EU production in different sectors,” he stated. “When that falls by a given amount, the alarm bell would ring just as when the Bank of England misses its inflation target by more than one percentage point the Governor has to write to the Chancellor to explain why.”
“I suggest that if an alarm goes off, there should be an immediate and rapid investigation to explain why and a joint industry working party about how it came about. If the conclusion was that the farming sector, or the wider chain, had simply become less efficient and competitive, that would be an issue for the industry to resolve. If the problem is producer prices that are lower than our competitors, that is an issue for the supply chain. But if the problem was distortions in the European market or regulation that was exporting our production, these would be issues for government to address.”
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