English Yali Banton-Heath, LWA Campaigns Communications Coordinator
On Thursday Steve Reed addressed the Oxford Farming Conference to announce a set of reforms which Labour hope will pave the way for a more profitable, environmentally friendly and resilient farming system in England.
While we’re glad to see some positive steps forward, we can’t help but feel like Labour have missed a real opportunity to set out a strong vision for British food and farming, and lay the foundations for real transformation through ambitious cross-departmental policy. Here are some of our reflections.
Trade
The government has promised to uphold and protect the UK’s environmental and animal welfare standards in any future trade deals. While this is reassuring, Labour still seem to be missing the point when it comes to international trade, and need to take a holistic approach which considers the impact of both imports and exports.
In his speech at the OFC, Mr Reed added that his department will be “increasing access for UK pork exports to China worth an additional £80 million pounds a year”. Focusing on supporting pork exports to China (and indeed chicken exports to South Africa) is in no way supporting food UK security, nor is it really protecting British farmers. The UK’s pig and poultry sectors are dominated by large multinational companies like Cargill and Pilgrim’s Pride who are based overseas and employ UK farmers and meat processors through vertically integrated supply chains. If Labour wants to protect the UK’s farmers, it should focus its efforts on small-medium scale farms who are striving to adopt more environmentally friendly farming systems but are struggling to keep their businesses afloat.
Furthermore, the environmental and climate impacts of large-scale pig and poultry ‘farms’ puts them wholly at odds with the government’s climate and nature commitments. As our 2023 report showed, the deforestation and land-use change caused by the overproduction of soy in places like the Amazon, is largely driven by the feed needs of these industrial pig and poultry operations.
Public Procurement
Labour have also announced that, for the first time ever, they will be monitoring food which is procured by the public sector to track where it comes from. This is their first step towards a manifesto pledge which commits to having 50% of publicly procured food sourced from local producers or produced to higher environmental standards.
While this is an obvious first step, it risks being so cautious and gradualistic that it effectively kicks that amazing opportunity to really transform local food systems into the long grass. We want to see more ambition to explore dynamic procurement schemes which would make public contacts more widely accessible. Multiple examples exist across the UK that show with the right investment and facilitation, collaboration between farmers, food service companies and ultimately the public sector organisations that procure the food, could help to build the kind of resilient localised food webs we need to feed our communities. We will be advocating for this collaborative approach as part of our work with the Local Food Plan this year, as it embarks on its final phase.
Furthermore, new public procurement targets will be difficult to meet without providing proper support measures for local producers and market gardens through specific ELMS incentives, support packages and capital grants schemes that are tailored to small-scale horticulture. These are measures we will continue to campaign for as part of our Horticulture campaign.
Planning
Mr Reed also pointed towards how the government intends on using new planning reforms to support food production; specifically to make it easier for farmers to build any buildings, barns and infrastructure they need to diversify their farming businesses. However, he gave the example in his speech of “chicken producers who want a larger shed to boost the amount of food they produce”, which is a far cry from the kind of farms that need to be prioritised in any future planning reforms.
While it’s promising to know that Labour will be addressing the planning system and the barriers it presents to farms, we’re disappointed that none of the recommendations laid out in our ‘Agroecology and Planning Reform’ briefing were included in Labour’s announcement.
Instead of planning rules that make it easier for large chicken factory farms to expand, we want to see planning reforms which will better support small-scale farmers and growers to live on their land, keep viable enterprises in operation, and build the necessary low impact infrastructure they need to support their businesses. In particular, we see an opportunity for genuinely affordable housing to be provided by landworkers themselves, through changes to policy 84a, the “rural workers dwelling policy” to make it easier for small scale agroecological enterprises to gain residential planning permission. We will be working with the Labour government this year to help influence what planning policy should look like and how reforms can better support agroecology.
Supply Chain Fairness
Policies that serve to re-balance power in supply chains in favour of farmers and producers is something the LWA have been advocating for since its inception. While Mr Reed announced at OFC that in line with his department’s newly announced 25 Year Farming Roadmap, new rules will be put in place this spring to ensure fairer contracts for the pig sector, these changes are far too limited in both scope and the scale of change that is needed to give farmers a fair price for their produce.
Focusing solely on the pig sector in the immediate term – a sector which is dominated by large-scale operations and vertically integrated supply chains – will do nothing to support farmers in other sectors who are concerned they may have to give up their farms and businesses before this year is out. Although we look forward to hearing more about the government’s supply chain regulation in the fresh produce sector, we feel that this was a missed opportunity to really tackle the root of the issue.
We need to see more ambitious policies from Labour, like legislation which would require supermarkets to pay extra to fund worker wage increases (this could follow a model such as the Fair Food Programme in the USA) or ensuring a National Living Wage for farmers which could be funded by higher tax rates on the corporate windfall profits of supermarkets and large food manufacturers.
Land-Use
We are reassured by Labour’s commitment to publishing a much needed land use framework this year, which Mr Reed has announced will sit alongside the 25 Year Farming Roadmap. In his speech he described the farming sector as “a sector that recognises restoring nature is not in competition with sustainable food production, but is essential to it.” It’s heartening to know that Mr Reed sees nature restoration and sustainable food production as being able to work alongside and in harmony with each other, and we hope that this land-sharing sentiment will be reflected in the framework.
GMOs
It is, however, deeply concerning that Labour are continuing along the same path as the previous Conservative government to recklessly deregulate GMOs. Mr Reed confirmed on Thursday that the government will be introducing secondary legislation by the end of March which will allow for new genetically modified crops to enter into our food and farming systems.
Instead of deregulating potentially dangerous novel technologies, Labour should instead be focussing on supporting farmers to build agrobiodiversity, and investing in farmer-led research for building climate resilience in our crops and farming systems.
New Entrants
We’re extremely disappointed that Mr Reed made no mention of new entrants in his speech at OFC, and that no policies aimed at boosting opportunities for education and training in nature-friendly farming have been announced. This is something that the LWA will be working hard on throughout 2025, to secure high quality, government funded paid training and education programmes for new entrants into agroecology. At a time when labour shortages are prevalent in the UK farming sector, it is essential that new entrants are encouraged and trained so they can contribute to addressing current and future farming challenges.
For further reading on some of the policies we will be advocating for, please see our Manifesto for Food, Farming and Forestry.
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