tesco farms

With Brexit casting a heavy shadow of uncertainty over UK food and farming, it’s never been more important for all parts of the supply chain to work together.

So why does the National Farmers Union think it’s a smart idea to pick a fight with British farming’s biggest customer right now?

The NFU has just filed an official complaint with National Trading Standards about ‘fake’ farm brands used by supermarkets – a practice it says is exemplified by Tesco’s own-label Farms range, introduced in March.

The argument, well-rehearsed by now, is that names like Redmere Farms and Woodside Farms sound so deliberately cosy and homegrown they dazzle shoppers into thinking they’re buying UK fare when some lines are, in fact, foreign imports.

It’s not hard to understand why farmers may have an appetite for pushing harder on perceived labelling injustices in the current climate. The referendum vote to leave the EU will bring many challenges for farming (in particular, the thorny issue of what will happen with subsidy payments looms large), but there are also indications shoppers may be tempted to seek out more UK-grown fare post-Brexit. In a survey conducted for The Grocer, 23% of shoppers claimed they planned to buy more British food now the UK is leaving the EU.

Understandably, producers will want to make sure they are well placed to take advantage of this – and clear country-of-origin labelling can play a role in that.

But, of course, the Farms brands under attack from the NFU do carry such origin information. And while the NFU points to a YouGov survey that suggests three out of five consumers may nevertheless fail to understand these brands aren’t necessarily used to just sell British produce, it is not unreasonable to argue, as Tesco UK boss Matt Davies did in The Grocer back in March, that 21st century consumers generally understand the concept of a brand.

The legal merits of the case, therefore, look rather uncertain (I’d also wager Tesco probably had a few well-paid lawyers take a look at its branding before launch). The NFU, however, may not feel it needs to win its case to consider its crusade against ‘fake’ farm brands a success. Given how much ire the launch of the range has raised in some quarters of the farming community, it’ll likely earn some brownie points with members purely for squaring up to the ‘bad guys’.

But that doesn’t stop this from being an odd fight to pick at this precise moment in time. The most important battle right now is at a political level: making the best possible case for British food & farming in terms of trade access, movement of labour and public support. And the best strategy for that is, surely, closer collaboration and partnership, not public point-scoring against customers. 

Not least because farmers may very well have to develop a sharper commercial edge if subsidy levels turn out to be less generous in the future – starting, one might suggest, with a crash course on the realities of branding.

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