UK farmers are issuing warnings to shoppers as they predict we'll see empty shelves at supermarkets in the future. It comes as they call on help from supermarket bosses amid unrest in the sector. Guy says the UK farming industry is on its knees amid pricing pressure from supermarket giants and insufficient government support.
Category
đź—ž
NewsTranscript
00:00 It sounds like what you're saying then is that consumers can expect more empty shelves
00:07 as we've seen in the past going forward unless this changes.
00:11 I would say almost certainly, yeah. Unless we see a radical change in supermarket behaviour
00:16 and clearly well thought out and well implemented government policy, the future for British
00:22 farming is pretty bleak.
00:24 49% of British fruit and vegetable farmers say it's likely they'll go out of business
00:29 over the course of the next year and many say supermarkets and their buyers are to blame.
00:34 They stand accused of not paying on time, pursuing cheaper food alternatives from overseas
00:39 and cancelling or changing orders at the last minute, with farmers also criticising fruit
00:44 and veg specifications for being too hard and too complex.
00:48 Typically when I started back in the 80s, 1980s about 38 pence in the pound went back
00:53 to a fruit or vegetable grower. Today that's fallen to about 25% and actually the amount
00:59 of money spent on food has also fallen. Yeah, our prices keep increasing and the result
01:05 is that we have an industry on its knees. I mean I'm 63, none of my five children want
01:11 to come back to the farm. I mean that is very, very typical of British farming today and
01:17 you know at a time when we've never needed farmers more.
01:21 Now many farmers have banded together to send an open letter to some of the chief execs
01:25 of the biggest brands in the UK, like Tesco, Sainsbury's, Morrisons, Asda, Aldi and Lidl,
01:31 calling for fairer treatments across the board.
01:33 Things we're asking for is that supermarkets pay what they agreed to pay, that they pay
01:39 on time, that they buy what they said they'd buy, that they have reasonable specifications,
01:45 preferably agreed with their suppliers rather than just imposed on their suppliers and a
01:50 more general but equally important point is that we try and get away from this annual
01:56 tendering purely on price so that farmers are supported by their customers to invest
02:01 in the future, that they have that sort of confidence which they most definitely don't
02:05 have at the moment.
02:07 And are supermarkets seemingly willing to work with you on this? Have you had any sort
02:11 of reply? Is there any pushback?
02:13 I think they're just hoping that we'll go away. Well up to a point, there will come
02:18 a point, and we've already seen this with eggs, where actually there is nothing more
02:23 to squeeze out. I think it's true of most of the industry, they cannot squeeze them
02:26 any more and at that point they probably will start looking at sort of longer term relationships.
02:31 We've seen a little bit with eggs, a little bit with dairy, it's still a long way away
02:37 in the fruit and vegetable business, the industry that I know best.
02:41 Andrew Opie, the British Retail Consortium's Director of Food and Sustainability said,
02:46 "Food retailers source and will continue to source the vast majority of their food from
02:50 the UK and work hard to pay a sustainable price to farmers. Retailers value their relationships
02:56 with British farmers and are supporting them by paying more for their produce. However,
03:01 retailers are also facing many additional costs."
03:03 [BLANK_AUDIO]