Guest blog by Maria Devereaux: What does Brexit mean for farmers and food?
When I offered to do this piece for Local Greens I hadn’t quite appreciated the real complexity that writing a piece of this nature and debate would entail. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not surprised it’s complicated, after all the EU affects the complete food chain from farm to plate.
A recent Panorama by Tom Heap talked to insiders who claim Brexit will mean lower quality, higher prices and less choice; whilst others claim it is a great opportunity to address the inefficiencies of our current system and allow us to design a new way of producing food. EU legislation currently dictates what farmers grow, sets animal welfare standards and provides a large supply of labour to work on the land and in food processing. This got me thinking about how much our Local Greens farmers rely on seasonal workers during harvest time, if at all? Many farmers voted to leave as they saw more opportunities outside of Europe but if you only produce for a local market, like our farmers, does that matter?
After 2020, EU-designed farm support in the form of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) will end. We have the opportunity to replace a system, which has largely failed to support farms and farm diversity, failed to protect our wildlife and failed to support services such as flood mitigation.
The UK has the opportunity to now adopt a better system moving towards a healthy, fair, humane and sustainable food and farming system. Sustain the Alliance for Food and Farming has put together a briefing paper, Beyond 2010 New farm policy, a new four-part deal for farming based on payments for public goods, capital grants, free advice and wider policy measures to ensure farmers can thrive. Getting the right policies in place is necessary not only to support our farming but for the health and wellbeing of the whole of the UK.
I have now come away from this with more questions and I want to talk to our farmers about this and get their views. So look out for the next installment whilst I dig deeper and get their opinions.
In the meantime take a look at some other Brexit blogs
- Better Food Britain: The legal milestones ahead Kath Dalmeny
- New Deal for Farmers post Brexit – pull down the pillars of EU farm policy and create a strong future for UK farmers after Brexit Vicki Hir
- With Brexit talks underway, how can we ensure a sustainable fishing future? Ruth Westcott