War in Ukraine: UK Farming and Food Production

Debate between Christian Matheson and Margaret Ferrier

Wednesday 20th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the effect of the war in Ukraine on UK farming and food production.

It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Dame Angela, and thank you for your kind guidance on the dress code. I will make do at the moment, but we will see how we go when the heat of debate ratchets up.

For me, the debate had its genesis in discussions with many of the farmers in my constituency, and I start by paying tribute to them for their help with my preparations for today, and also to the National Farmers Union, which has given me so much information. The war, which in many respects came out of nowhere, has piled additional pressures on a sector that was already facing great difficulties. At the outset, however, I want us to turn our thoughts to the brave defenders of their Ukrainian homeland and the colossal humanitarian disaster that they face in Ukraine. I am afraid to say that we now also need to remember the countless victims, it would seem, of war crimes, the evidence for which mounts daily.

The invasion exacerbated existing inflationary and supply chain pressures, which will have lasting consequences for the scale of UK agricultural production. Globally, the conflict will exacerbate the pressure on food supplies in the poorest parts of the world. British farmers are growers, and they are price takers. That means they are exposed and vulnerable to the challenges of rising inflation in times of economic pressure. The cost of producing food in the UK has increased drastically in recent months. The cost of all agricultural inputs is going up, including fuel, feed, packaging, transport, energy and, of course, labour costs.

I pay tribute to all those who work in farming and food production. It is a tough sector to work in, and for people in such vital sectors, conditions have rarely been tougher. Costs are spiralling and profit margins are falling, but they keep going every day. The farmers from Cheshire I spoke to were absolutely clear that they love what they do, and they keep going because agriculture sits at the heart of the Cheshire economy and at the heart of the British economy. They do that to keep the country fed, and if we do not give them help—the help that they need—they will not be able to do it for much longer.

The humanitarian disaster in Ukraine is being felt across the globe. Large parts of the Ukrainian breadbasket are in conflict zones and crops cannot be harvested, or if they can, the grain and the produce cannot be exported, or, as we are seeing, they are being stolen by Russia.

We are seeing the crisis impacting across the world, especially in developing countries. Ukrainian grain feeds 400 million people. The UK is also affected. Brexit has not helped, with large reductions in the labour supply, but I was astonished to hear that last year an incredible 60% of the seasonal agricultural workforce came from Ukraine.

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)]

I thank the hon. Member for making that point. Ukrainians did indeed make up 67% of seasonal workers between 2020 and 2022—a huge contribution to the British farming sector. With more men staying in Ukraine to fight the war, does he share my concerns about the knock-on effect that that will have on UK food production?

[Christian Matheson]

I absolutely do, and the hon. Lady is right. Many of those workers are back defending their homeland—who can blame them for that? The resultant labour shortages have been met with an inevitable demand for increased wages. One Cheshire farmer told me of an 11% increase in this year alone. Without sufficient labour, farms simply cannot be profitable and, frankly, sometimes cannot work. As one farmer put it, “We’re all running hand to mouth.”

I am not going to query or reject the idea that farm labourers should not get a decent pay rise. I am a trade unionist and I absolutely support that, but the costs need to be shared fairly across the sector and borne by the whole chain. Day-to-day costs are rocketing. Fertiliser, which can increase crop yield by about 30%, has become cripplingly expensive. One Cheshire farmer estimated to me that his fertiliser costs had risen by 300% in just over a year, while another suggested that he was being optimistic and it was more than that.

The situation has not been helped by the closure of the CF Fertilisers factory in Ellesmere Port. I know how hard my neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) has been working to find a solution to keep the factory open, and he has told me that he is in regular contact with the Minister and her Department—I thank her for that. I desperately hope that we get a solution to the problem, and I thank them both for their work.

Without fertiliser, crop yields will fall. I remind the House that farmers do not tend to buy fertiliser on the spot. They are already ordering their supplies for next year, just as they are already planning crops, ordering animal feed and securing energy deals for six, 12 and 18 months ahead. The uncertainty globally and domestically is impossible to live with.

One of the big asks of the NFU is to have a gas fertiliser price index. Fertiliser markets are opaque, meaning that farmers have low trust in those markets, and are receiving poor market signals to enable them to be responsive. That is a threat to confidence, because farmers do not want to invest in fertiliser, which is stalling fertiliser sales, as well as threatening farmers’ productivity and the UK’s productive capacity. The NFU wants farmers to have access to proactive forward prices on fertiliser, allowing producers, distributors and farmers alike to manage their risk. That will require Government to establish a trusted gas fertiliser index with the industry, to drive transparency in fertiliser markets.

In addition, the industry needs to be able to see clearly where the market is relative to the global benchmark prices. That is well established in the grain, dairy and meat markets. It is also a fact that much of the gas that was used to produce the fertiliser came from Russia. I welcome the fact that we are reducing—I hope to zero—any dealings that we have with Russia, including buying gas from it, but we have to recognise that that will have a major impact on this market.

Fuel costs are also on the rise. Red diesel is more expensive, with one farming contractor I know of having to increase their cash reserve by an astonishing £50,000 to pay for fuel costs. Meanwhile, farmers pay more than ever to fill up the machines that keep their businesses going. Those affected ask me why crude oil prices fall, but their costs go up. The answer is sadly clear: this is a broken market, and without action to address it, things will only go downhill.

Food production relies very much on the packaging available, much of it specialised for certain foodstuffs. Even essentials such as cardboard and the necessary plastics for meat storage are in short supply, before we consider more specialised materials such as silage. British food has some of the lowest carbon footprint in the world, due to how efficient British farmers are, but there is only so much they can do on their own. Such businesses are starting to feel that they are, almost literally, at the bottom of the food chain.

As things stand, the risk is entirely with the farmer. For example, a potato farmer stored his crop from the 2021 harvest until June 2022—just last month—without earning an extra penny from the processer. One grower was paid £200,000 for potatoes, which sold in the supermarket for £4.2 million, so the grower received only 4.7%. Free-range eggs have also gone up at least 20p per dozen in supermarkets, but only 5p of that increase goes to the producer. Farmers want to grow, to survive and to flourish, but we must have a market that allows that. We need to take the bottlenecks out of the system, so that it flows more smoothly. Only by threatening to withhold supplies did dairy farmers secure a slightly better deal, and they are still struggling.

This period of unprecedented agricultural inflation coincides with the introduction of the agricultural transition plan from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, under which the old direct support payments to farmers in England under the common agricultural policy are being reduced. Farmers have already received significant cuts to those old direct payments, with further to come this year. The largest farms will receive cuts of 40%.

The Government are in the process of rolling out new support schemes, but the NFU is seriously concerned that the new schemes simply are not ready for farmers to be able to access them and start to make up the shortfall. That is not just the view of the NFU; it has been echoed by the National Audit Office, the Public Accounts Committee, and the Institute for Government. Vital farm supplies sit inaccessible in Ukraine, and veterinary medication sits undeliverable in Northern Ireland because of the problems with Brexit. Alternative options are becoming scarce.

When British farmers suffer, so does the rest of the world. As the crisis in Ukraine hits other nations, one farmer asked me why Britain, as a leading member of the G7, does not consider its own agricultural sector to be part of the solution. The farmers who told me their stories also tell a sorry tale about the future of the sector. One simply asked, “Where is the future?” Every year, 8% of dairy farmers quit their business. Previously, others would step in to replace them. That, it seems, is no longer the case. As confidence falls, young farmers find that they cannot get loans. They cannot get started and cannot continue this proud British tradition.

I wish to finish on a positive note on behalf of the UK farming sector. I want to celebrate the success of the sector and the hard work and 365 days a year commitment of our farmers and farm labourers. Let us make every day Back British Farming Day and let us resolve to get a fair deal for farmers. The future could be positive. As I have said, British food has one of the lowest carbon footprints in the world. Our farmers tell me they want to adapt to further change—certainly moving away, for example, from carbon-intensive fertiliser—but they want to be able to do so in a managed way and not in a way where they are faced, as they currently are, with the shock brought about by the war. They want to reduce emissions and move to more sustainable fertiliser, as I have said. They want to reduce antibiotic use and further increase animal welfare, but they are doing that now on wafer-thin margins. As one farmer put it in what is probably a very agricultural farming way, “We have no fat on our backs right now, and we need this.”

Farmers want to grow, survive, flourish and contribute to the success of our nation. The war has put intolerable pressure on them at a time when the prevailing situation was already difficult. They feel that all the increasing cost pressures are being borne by the farming sector when they should be shared across the entire food chain. We must have a domestic market that allows that contribution to flourish.

Bank Branch Closures

Debate between Christian Matheson and Margaret Ferrier

Thursday 30th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Christian Matheson]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and I was about to make exactly the same point.

People drop into shopping areas such as Hoole to go to the bank and then perhaps to one of the local shops. Incidentally, Hoole recently won the outstanding award from the “Great British High Street” awards, for which I thank the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones). I would be grateful if the Minister passed on my thanks to him.

The bank is very much part of the ecology of the local high street. If we take it away, we damage that ecology and the other small businesses that rely on it for increasing custom, as people pop to the bank and then to one of the small shops. We rely on it, too, to provide easy access to banks for small businesses, as my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) pointed out. Small businesses feel able to put up a small “back in 10 minutes” sign on their door in the middle of the day as they pop down to the local bank to get change or pay in money, but they would not feel able to put up a “back in two hours” sign if they were they forced to go into the city centre of Chester or indeed any large town. It is tough running small businesses and time away from the shop is business time lost.

For all the advantages of internet banking—and there are many—the blunt truth is that a small business cannot pay cash into the bank through a laptop computer. I cannot help but wonder whether all of this is made worse because of the advertising these banks use. No wonder HSBC moved away from calling itself “the world’s local bank”; yet we still have Lloyds bank saying that it has been “by our side” for 250 years—at the same time as it closes its Hoole branch. It is not by our side any more in Hoole, I am afraid. The very untruths of the advertising campaigns, claiming to be local and supportive of local small businesses, while making access to branches harder, exacerbates the crisis that we face—and it is a crisis.

Reuters reported last week that 600 branches closed in the 12 months to April this year. There is a social division in these closures. It says that more than 90% of the closures were in areas where the median household income was below the British average of £27,600, according to an analysis of Office for National Statistics data on average incomes in the locations where branches were closed. By comparison, five out of the eight branches opened by these banks over the same period were in some of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Britain: Chelsea, Canary Wharf, St Paul’s, Marylebone and Clapham, all districts in London. That is right: despite the onward march of technology, banks are still opening new branches, but in highly affluent areas.

The Reuters report cites concerns from campaigners that

“banks are cutting too fast in places where people are less able to fall back on digital banking services because of a lack of access.”

That reminds me of the words of my good friend the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) about the different ways in which access to banking services might be prevented. Problems can be caused by people’s finances, the lack of physical access or the inability to use the internet. The report quotes Fionn Travers Smith of Move Your Money, which campaigns for ethical banking. She says:

“We are witnessing the creation of a dual financial system: one for the middle class and wealthy and another for the poor.”

Indeed, I have found that one of the groups to be hardest hit by the recent closures in Chester are pensioners, not necessarily the most tech-savvy group—although I do not want to make assumptions—who now have to make the journey into the centre of my city.

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (SNP)]

On that point, I have been dealing with a constituency case in which a couple were conned out of their life savings—some £50,000—in a sophisticated telephone and online scam. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that forcing people to adopt these services rather than giving them the option of over-the-counter services serves only to enable organised crime and scams?

[Christian Matheson]

I have to say that the thought had not occurred to me, but I think that dreadful case illustrates a problem on which we should all focus. We can have a lot more confidence in dealing with a bank when we are inside a physical bank and dealing with an individual as opposed to being subjected to one these terrible scams. I am most grateful to the hon. Lady for bringing that awful case and awful problem to our attention.