Farmers are at a five year low - they need better support and a fair deal for their food

More than 60% of farmers are worried about their future according to The Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (Defra's) latest Farmer Opinion Tracker, which has provided a snapshot of views and opinions towards Defra’s vision for farming since 2019. The latest results from October 2024 show a gradual decline in confidence and optimism since the survey was first launched.

Farmers were asked questions about business planning, relationships with farming organisations and Defra, new schemes and the future of farming. This was before the announcements later that month of changes to farm inheritance tax allowances at the 2024 Autumn Budget. Based on the number of farmer protests that have happened since, those figures could potentially be much worse if taken today.

The numbers don’t lie - farmer's aren't happy

As of October 2024, just 35% of farmers felt positive about their future (see chart below).

Defra’s findings reflect those of Riverford’s Get Fair About Farming campaign which found that 61% of farmers believe they will have to abandon their farms in the next 18 months, largely due to exploitative supermarket contracts.

Also recently released was Professor Tim Lang’s report “Just in Case: 7 steps to narrow the UK civil food resilience gap”, a timely reminder of the need for UK food systems resilience and preparedness against shocks to our food landscape. This highlights that we cannot afford for more farmers to move away from farming just as shocks to food supply caused by extreme weather events and geo-political conflicts appear to be on the rise.

Defra’s Farmer Opinion Tracker also found that a staggering 81% of farmers said it would be very (60%) or moderately (21%) important to the future of their business for Defra to be paying for environmental outcomes (see chart below).

Building reslience - the Bridging the Gap way

Taken together this latest data should send a clear message to government, that to increase our resilience to shocks in our food system, Defra must make better, clearer, more widely accessible payments to farmers for environmental outcomes and support greater fairness and access to farmer focused supply chains.

Through our pilots, Bridging the Gap has been exploring ways to better support farmers such as the creation of farmer-focused supply chains that ensure they get a fair deal for the food they produce.

Programme partners, Growing Communities commissioned a NEF report in 2021 which concluded that:

“By using short supply chains and working in partnership with farmers, Growing Communities is able to redistribute economic power to farmers, providing them with financial security to generate considerable social value for themselves and even greater benefits for the environment.”

In Wales, Bridging the Gap pilot, Welsh Veg in Schools, is working directly with farmers to understand what they are able to produce and local authorities to understand what they can serve in school meals. The pilot is offering farmers a fair route to that market, via a local wholesaler, for their vegetables so that they can feel confident that their product will sell. Bridging the Gap funding, together with the wholesaler Castell Howell, covers the investment needed, ensuring that growers get a fair price for their produce.

In London, the Hackney Organic School Food pilot is supplied by the Better Food Shed (Growing Communities’ wholesale business) which ensures a fair price for farmers and transparency in their supply chain. With Better Food Shed supplying increasing numbers of schools in East London with organic fruit and vegetables on existing budgets, there is a clear opportunity in public food supply chains for this farmer focused and environmentally sustainable approach.

Is it all doom and gloom?

Despite these latest findings, there has been some cause for optimism, and we hope to see this build on over the coming months:

• An amendment to the 5 hectare limit on farms able to access payments under ELMs, which opens up the potential for more farms to be paid for environmental outcomes
• Steve Reed promised reforms to supply chains to make farming more profitable and “farmer-led” with a 25 year roadmap
• The Labour Party committed to 50% local or sustainable food in public sector food in their election manifesto, which offers an opportunity for developing more local and sustainable supply chains

If government is to shift the dial in farmer sentiment and with it UK food resilience, they need to strengthen their commitments, which currently lack robust and accessible routes to real change for farmers.

The Bridging the Gap programme is using evidence from the pilots to call for key policy changes to make climate and nature friendly food accessible to everyone via farmer-focused supply chains. Read more about it here.