Labour Agri Policy 2025

[soapsud]

Traditionally, Labour redistributes wealth and massively increases its civil service for checks and balances.

What would you want put in place to support the production of UK food remembering that most of us like consistent prices for our budgets?

The choices are:

1. Socialism of the supply chain - starting with price setting in one nationwide HMG supermarket.
This would properly reflect costs of production and would, with integrited IT systems, react and relay cost changes back to farmers
2. Top Down Quotas, market shares and regional allocations.
3. BPS+ Production based subsidy with environmental schemes
4. Other - None of the above - you say what you want

 

[warksfarmer]

It’s a very simple system that has worked for decades. If the government want cheap food to avoid riots in the streets they need to subsidise it.

Food comes first before the health service or education etc. Hungry people in a 1st world country will mean looting and we are getting closer and closer to this happening.

They need to do four things.

1. reinstate BPS at £100/ac.

2. put some control over the supermarkets/processors with regards to prices they pay farmers.

3. put some control over the input suppliers capping the cost of fuel and fertiliser.

4. invest in the current Defra online portal where farmers do the stewardship and bps claims as a way to directly talk to us through polls. This will rid the industry of the Nfu which is acting against farmers and for the food processors and supermarkets.

 

[Bramble]

Do nothing, let them carry on as they are.

Eventually they will discover the folly of relying on imported food. Either shortages of some products, or wild swings in prices through the year will be the result, only the general public (voter's) will force a change.

Also wait until the carbon footprint of imported goods is allocated to the country that consumes them rather than produces the items. After all if there was no demand for a product then another country wouldn't produce it. The UKs net zero position will be exposed as the sham we all know it is.

Change will only be driven by the consumer not the producer

 

[Will Blackburn]

Drainage grants and liming grants to about 60/80% of the cost would drive efficient farming. Everything else is a landowner subsidy.

 

[Will Blackburn]

Traditionally, Labour redistributes wealth and massively increases its civil service for checks and balances.

What would you want put in place to support the production of UK food remembering that most of us like consistent prices for our budgets?

The choices are:

1. Socialism of the supply chain - starting with price setting in one nationwide HMG supermarket.
This would properly reflect costs of production and would, with integrited IT systems, react and relay cost changes back to farmers
2. Top Down Quotas, market shares and regional allocations.
3. BPS+ Production based subsidy with environmental schemes
4. Other - None of the above - you say what you want

I’m not sure there’s enough peeps to increase the civil service more than these interventionist conservatives we have now? We have surely reached peak clipboard?

 

[DrWazzock]

I’d simply reinstate BPS, scrap SFI, and retain CS.
The problem with grants for specific items is that suppliers of those items just add the grant straight onto the price and ultimately nobody is any better off and inflation is stoked.
BPS, being non specific in terms of what it’s actually spent on doesn’t have the same immediate inflationary effect, is simple and cheap to administer and leaves the farmer free to spend it on whatever he deems to be most cost efficient for the business.
BPS also acts like crop insurance and disaster relief and underpins food supply security. It’s an incredibly simple and flexible support mechanism, and with fluctuating input and output prices and volatile weather patterns is needed now more than ever.

 

[DrWazzock]

BPS plugs the hole in the sinking ship in a bad year.
SFI just pays you to rearrange the deckchairs.

 

[Will Blackburn]

BPS, being non specific in terms of what it’s actually spent on doesn’t have the same immediate inflationary effect, is simple and cheap to administer and leaves the farmer free to spend it on whatever he deems to be most cost efficient for the business.
BPS also acts like crop insurance and disaster relief and underpins food supply security. It’s an incredibly simple and flexible support mechanism, and with fluctuating input and output prices and volatile weather patterns is needed now more than ever.

Said no tenant farmer ever.

 

[S J H]

Drainage grants and liming grants to about 60/80% of the cost would drive efficient farming. Everything else is a landowner subsidy.

That would be the best money spent, will be there for generations aswell rather than kit that will be stuck in the hedges.

 

[DrWazzock]

Said no tenant farmer ever.

Well BPS does have a direct inflationary effect on rents but so does offering silly money for FBT land. It’s a compromise. Tenants aren’t instructed to spend BPS on the rent in the same way as they must spend grants on specific items of kit.
I think another valid point is that BPS helps with the cost of higher standards that we have to meet when compared to imports.
With RT setting us at a cost disadvantage to imports isn’t it right that we are compensated for those additional costs?

 

[robs1]

As said, grants to make farming more productive and improve its infrastructure plus dumping stupid things like red tractor and all the supplier schemes unless they apply it to every single item they sell absolutely no exception. Bringing back farm subs just allows people to pay higher rents, buy bigger tractors to pose in or in older farmers cases just enjoy taking life a bit easier, worse of all spending money on foreign made kit just exports that money, spending on drainage and buildings etc keeps the money here and creates jobs here, perhaps grants for solar on roofs of ag buildings and do away with them on decent land that should be growing food

 

[Party Pete]

Drainage grants and liming grants to about 60/80% of the cost would drive efficient farming. Everything else is a landowner subsidy.

Annoying for those of us that have tried to keep on top of drainage and lime out of our own pockets though .

 

[Happy]

Drainage grants and liming grants to about 60/80% of the cost would drive efficient farming. Everything else is a landowner subsidy.

Would they? Those that want to be efficient regularly spend on that already. Those that don’t largely deserve to fall by the wayside.

Likely to just put up the price of gravel, pipe and Lime if Introduced.

 

[DrWazzock]

So what happens next time the price of fertiliser goes through the roof? Last year they paid 50% of BPS early. That sort of help soon won’t be an option. What use is a drainage grant or new shed in that kind of situation?
Half of my OSR looks decidedly dodgy (thanks to DEFRA ban on neonics) possibly leaving me £20k down this coming year. I dont need any new infrastructure. I need to maintain cashflow. Wooden gates, soil tests, cover crops etc are useless to the ongoing solvency of my business when major crisis hits. When my cash runs out I’ll have no option but to stop producing and with certain arable crops become inherently unviable or too risky without BPS, so will many other growers. Then you will see real shortages and massive food price inflation.

 

[Will Blackburn]

Annoying for those of us that have tried to keep on top of drainage and lime out of our own pockets though .

So you know it's not a once in a life time job.

 

[SilliamWhale]

Am I the only one who doesn't think we have a food shortage and its all a bit of a concoction?

 

[warksfarmer]

Am I the only one who doesn't think we have a food shortage and its all a bit of a concoction?

There’s no food shortages in the farm shops, butchers, fruit & veg, corner shops no …… supermarkets defintely yes. A friend is a buyer for Asda and they genuinely can’t get quantities of fruit and veg from here or abroad.

 

[Bossfarmer]

What id like to know is how the english farmers that bought fert before the last few weeks and havent forward sold grain yet(which could be most of them) are going to make any money this year with wheat most likely being back down under 200 at harvest, the bps was their safety net the government have cut a chunk of that from them and not replaced it for some reason, madness, meanwhile the general public are all getting pay rises to help with their mortgages, they better pray for big yields

 

[Humble Village Farmer]

So what happens next time the price of fertiliser goes through the roof? Last year they paid 50% of BPS early. That sort of help soon won’t be an option. What use is a drainage grant or new shed in that kind of situation?
Half of my OSR looks decidedly dodgy (thanks to DEFRA ban on neonics) possibly leaving me £20k down this coming year. I dont need any new infrastructure. I need to maintain cashflow. Wooden gates, soil tests, cover crops etc are useless to the ongoing solvency of my business when major crisis hits. When my cash runs out I’ll have no option but to stop producing and with certain arable crops become inherently unviable or too risky without BPS, so will many other growers. Then you will see real shortages and massive food price inflation.

A couple of points there, why can't you pay for your own fertiliser?

And why will food shortages and massive food price inflation be a problem? Are you happy with prices as they are now? I'm not. How else are you going to pay for the fertiliser you can't exist without

 

[Will Blackburn]

This is happening when the supermarkets are actively press releasing their belief that suppliers are profiteering, this is no coincidence.