The president of the National Farmers’ Union has attacked Boris Johnson’s government for “completely contradictory” policies that show a “total lack of understanding of how food production works”, in a ramping up of rhetoric from the UK’s largest farming group.
Minette Batters told the NFU’s annual conference that after a labour crisis, a controversial subsidy overhaul and a trade deal with Australia that is expected to cut into UK farm output, “the UK government’s energy and ambition for our countryside seems to be almost entirely focused on anything other than domestic food production”.
“We need a plan that pre-empts crises rather than repeatedly running into them,” Batters said.