The president of the National Farmers’ Union has accused the government of using British food producers as a “pawn” in post-Brexit trade deals.
Minette Batters, who has led the organisation representing British farmers since 2018, said “the most prized food market in the world” had been “handed over for nothing” by ministers, in their rush to sign wide-ranging free-trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand after the UK’s departure from the European Union.
Under the terms of the UK-Australia deal, which was signed in December, Australian beef and lamb farmers will gradually gain more access to the UK market over the first 10 years, before all tariffs and quotas on imported meat are removed. Similar arrangements have been agreed for Australian dairy products, with a five-year transition period, and eight years for sugar.
“It does feel like a betrayal,” Batters said in an interview with the Observer. “My greatest fear was that we would be used as a pawn in trade deals and effectively that is what’s happened.”
The nation’s food producers said they had been promised by successive environment secretaries, since Michael Gove held the post between 2017 and 2019, that any post-Brexit free-trade deals would include permanent protection for domestic food producers, in the event of a wave of imports.
“These are really bad trade deals for the UK because there are no checks and balances, she said. “We were promised as farmers that there would be forever-and-a-day safeguards, so if there was a problem, they could do something about it.”
Farmers have long feared that trade deals with food-exporting nations, such as Australia and New Zealand, would lead to a flood of cheaply produced meat, dairy and sugar arriving on British shores, driving down the price of food produced domestically to a higher standard and at a higher cost.
NFU members believe these agreements have set a dangerous precedent for talks with much larger food producers such as the United States, Canada and Brazil.
Batters disputed the suggestion by some ministers that UK farmers need to be more ambitious and export more of their produce. She insisted there will not be any demand for British beef and lamb in Australia, which has much larger farms, combined with a smaller population, and a higher cost of living than the UK.
Batters criticised what she described as the “adversarial” approach required to negotiate with government. Food producers have pleaded for the allocation of a higher number of seasonal worker visas in the first few years following Brexit, to ease the transition from a reliance on temporary EU workers.
Labour shortages following Brexit and Covid have already resulted in unpicked fruit rotting in fields, and a cull of healthy pigs on farms, because of a lack of staff at slaughterhouses.
The seasonal worker scheme has been extended by the government until 2024, allowing 30,000 foreign workers to come to the UK to help with fruit, crops and – from this year – plants such as daffodils. The government has retained the option of increasing the number of visas by 10,000 if required, but this still falls short of the total requested by food producers.
“We’ve had to fight so hard for what we’ve achieved,” Batters said, adding that the industry works in “partnership” with government in other countries, including Australia and New Zealand, where farmers are included in trade missions.
Ministers in Westminster are far removed from farmers and rural communities, Batters said.
“Agriculture underpins the entire rural economy. In some very fragile parts of the country, if you didn’t have agriculture, the village schools, the local community, the allied trades, the local veterinary practice, the auction market, are all put at risk.”
