Farmer’s criticise plan that warns climate crisis will lead to food price shocks and shortages

The National Farmers’ Union says continued record temperatures show what the farming sector is up against. Photograph: Maureen McLean/Shutterstock View image in fullscreen The National Farmers’ Union says continued record temperatures show what the farming sector is up against. Photograph: Maureen McLean/Shutterstock Farmers criticise plan that warns climate crisis will lead to food price shocks and shortages Farm owners say government’s long-term direction fails to adequately fund a response to UK’s food security threat The climate crisis will lead to food price shocks and shortages, the government has warned in its new plan for British farming. But farmers criticised the plan , which outlines for the first time the government’s vision for the long-term direction of farming, for failing to adequately fund a response to this threat to the UK’s food security. In the plan, published on Wednesday, the government warns that geopolitical instability, the climate crisis, environmental degradation and supply chain disruptions are affecting the UK’s food security. It warns this could increase the risk of “severe food price shocks” and in some “extreme situations, lead to reduced availability of certain foods”. The climate crisis is already affecting food prices – for example, potato prices rose by 22% in the UK during January and February 2024 after heavy rain the previous year. A key solution to this, the plan says, is a shift away from fertilisers and pesticides and towards more sustainable farming systems. “Nature-friendly farming systems can sustain or enhance production while strengthening resilience and reducing input dependency. Too often, the debate around farming and the environment is framed as a trade-off, with food production on one side and nature recovery on the other. But the most resilient farms are profitable precisely because they work with the environment, not against it,” the report says. Tom Bradshaw, the president of the National Farmers’ Union, recognised the risk the climate crisis posed to the future of farming, and said the continuing “record temperatures” showed what the farming sector was up against. However, he criticised the plan for failing to allocate long-term funding to deal with climate breakdown. The plan says the budget for environmental land management (ELM) schemes will increase to up to £2bn a year by 2029. This funding increase was first announced last summer. View image in fullscreen Wheat harvests are among the farming practices to be affected by extreme weather conditions proving the climate threat to food security. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images ELM schemes are packages of payments that replaced the EU’s common agricultural policy (Cap) after Brexit, which paid land managers for the amount of land in their care. The aim of the schemes is to pay farmers to look after nature, soil and other public goods, rather than simply for farming and owning land. “The Treasury is conspicuously absent in this plan. Inste