The NFU can go boil their heads

This is a special interest group demanding more of our money:

The supply chain crisis must be fixed urgently if the government is to ensure food security in the UK, a coalition of industry groups has warned.

Food and farming leaders warn that the sector has been hit by shortages of workers from seasonal fruit pickers to abattoir staff and lorry drivers, alongside inflation that has driven up the price of energy, feed and fertiliser.

The National Farmers’ Union (NFU), which has convened a summit of organisations to discuss food security on Tuesday, called for the government to make a serious commitment to at least keep Britain’s self sufficiency in food production at 60%, and create an environment to support businesses.

As the government itself points out, significant domestic supply is actually detrimental to food security:

Food Production to Supply Ratio is calculated as the farm-gate value of raw food production (including for export) divided by the value of raw food for human consumption. It provides a broad indicator of the ability of UK agriculture to meet consumer demand.

A high production to supply ratio fails to insulate a country against many possible disruptions to its supply chain.

Britain is a small enough place that the weather events that are so detrimental to a season’s crops can affect the whole place. Therefore concentrating our supply source in an area that can all be affected by the one season’s weather - or crop disease, or animal plague - reduces our food security.

As it happens that domestic production is about 54% of what we consume and 63% or so of all food - that second including exports.

The actually important demand there is “an environment to support businesses”. The NFU wants to ensure that when the holdover of the EU subsidy schemes disappears then there’s some other ladling of our cash into farmers’ pockets. “Food security” is just the latest fashionable cloaking for this demand.

As we should all already know and as the government itself does, food security is enhanced by having many sources of food, not concentrating supply into one geographical area.

The NFU can go boil their heads.