Farmers’ incomes have remained stagnant since the 1970s despite improvements in productivity and a fall in the workforce, research has found.
This has been driven by falling prices for farm produce; as the UK has become more reliant on imports, supermarkets have taken over grocery shopping, and households are eating more ultra-processed food, according to the report by the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission.
Over the past five years, the average income for a farmer has been £32,272. After adjusting for inflation, this is the same level as in the mid-1970s. During the same period, the economy has grown and real-terms wages have risen in other sectors.
Farmers in the UK have been protesting recently after the government introduced inheritance tax on their assets. They argue the meagre income they make from their farms will probably not be enough to pay the charges, meaning their children will have to sell the land. This change has coincided with the 18 wettest months on record, as well as the ending of EU farming subsidies.
The report also warns that an “extreme consolidation” of the supply chain in products like animal feed, fertiliser and tractors is dominated by a few very large companies, which means “farmers have little bargaining power, small firms struggle, and the biggest corporations exert a strong influence on government policy, all of which locks the food system into dysfunction”.
The authors said: “The country’s reliance on a shrinking number of larger farms and a handful of major businesses is a risk to food security and resilience in a world suffering the effects of climate change and unstable geopolitics.”
Recommendations in the report include that the government should set core standards in trade deals around environment, health and animal welfare that are tied to domestic farming policy, meaning a ban on imports of food produced to a lower standard than what is legal in the UK. It also recommends establishing a food market regulator with a public value remit and targeting agriculture spending towards priority sectors such as fruit, vegetables, and pulses.
The environment secretary, Steve Reed, has said farmers are not paid enough for what they do and pledged to publish a 25-year farming plan that will address these issues. He said the plan would be about “supply chain fairness”, meaning farmers would be paid fairly by those to whom they sell produce.
Food prices have been plummeting as farmer incomes have stagnated, the report says, arguing: “This version of cheapness is expensive. The real price is being paid in people’s health, in farming communities, by our wildlife, air and waterways, and in Britain’s ability to feed itself in the long run.”
The report also lays out how consolidated the supply chain has become; for example, four abattoir firms supply about 70% of the fresh beef in supermarkets. These supermarkets also buy their own-label milk from just two dairy processors, which purchase about 40% of the 15bn litres produced by UK farmers.
Additionally, more than half of the country’s cattle and sheep feed is supplied by four companies, while the national fertiliser market is dominated by three major firms, and in 2023, 80% of the 11,000 tractors sold were from brands belonging to three big manufacturers. This gives farmers less ability to shop around and bargain to get a better price.
