Whether a general election will come in the second half of the year or even sooner, the government’s manoeuvres in recent days – when it comes to the food sector at least – show it is now very much in electioneering mode.

Of course, Rishi Sunak’s “working assumption” (as he put it yesterday), that we’ll have an election closer to the end than the beginning of 2024 currently leaves the PM with a lot of wriggle room.

But with minor parties like the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK already setting their stall out and Keir Starmer making an impassioned pledge for a “decade of national renewal” under Labour, it’s clear the new year has kicked off a very active election campaigning period.

To that end, recently appointed environment secretary Steve Barclay was in giving mode yesterday at the Oxford Farming Conference – in contrast to many of his predecessors in recent years – when he announced some actual, tangible policies.

The government’s much-vaunted, post-Brexit, post-Common Agriculture Policy Environmental Land Management schemes (ELMS), which are designed to pay producers subsidies for so-called “public goods” (but at much lower financial levels than the sector had been used to pre-Brexit) was one key highlight.

Barclay – who also struck a far more conciliatory tone than predecessor Thérèse Coffey often did – unveiled what he described as the “biggest upgrade to the government’s farming schemes since the UK left the EU” in the form of a package of improvements to ELMS.

Promising to “get stuff done” and quickly, this included additional funding via a 10% increase in payments through the Sustainable Farming Incentive and Countryside Stewardship scheme, plus 50 new sustainability-led actions for which producers can be rewarded with cash.

Barclay, however, did not address claims made in a Guardian piece this week that the government had underspent by hundreds of millions of pounds the £2.4bn it had pledged to invest in the agriculture sector each year via the likes of the ELMS.

And the jury is still out on the effectiveness of these schemes, with Roger Kerr, CEO of accreditation body Organic Farmers & Growers, describing Barclay’s announcement as “a band aid” to patch up that underspend, reported to be more than £220m.

Uptake of a scheme that’s been habitually criticised over its shortcomings for the past two years had been “staggeringly low”, Kerr added, with the upgrade appearing to be a “last-ditch attempt to win over disillusioned farmers”, he suggested.

How supermarkets promote British produce

Perhaps a less contentious announcement from Barclay came in the form of his pledge for a “rapid” consultation to make it easier for shoppers to seek British food and drink through proposals for new country of origin and method of production labelling.

They include proposals to highlight when imported products do not meet UK welfare standards, in addition to helping ensure “food produced to the highest standards was consistently labelled”, Barclay said.

He also pledged to speak with retailers about how to better promote British produce in-store, in addition to working with them to identify “ways to better support online customers to understand the origin of their food products at the point of purchase, including the option of a Buy British Button”.

On the face of it, such proposals – the matter of intense lobbying from farming campaigners for a number of years – could prove a welcome boost for a sector in financial dire straits, despite the challenges that would come with its rollout.

But OF&G’s Kerr was one of many to point out that suggesting a ‘Buy British Button’, against the background of a series of Tory trade deals that “make it harder for UK farmers to compete with much larger producer nations” which also produce to lower standards, was “quite frankly unbelievable, especially when it was only eight weeks ago that ex-minister Jacob Rees-Mogg was calling for more imported food to negate the need of seasonal workers”.

This all comes as Labour – represented at the conference by Barclay’s shadow secretary of state Steve Reed – announced a “new deal” for farmers and the wider food sector at the turn of the new year. It includes work to mitigate flood damage on farmland, the renegotiation of post-Brexit veterinary agreements with the EU and big plans to boost production through public procurement commitments for British-sourced foods.

Cheap UK produce

But while politicians jockey for influence ahead of voting day, two separate reports published this week laid bare the continuing long-term anguish being felt across the agrifood sector.

One, by Promar International for the NFU, revealed soaring production costs of up to 39% over the past two years continued to drive businesses to the wall and threatened our self-sufficiency, at a moment when we should be looking to grow it.

Meanwhile, a second, by retail expert Ged Futter for the Oxford Farming Conference, warned a farming sector plagued by an ever-growing audit burden, not to mention inflationary and weather challenges, was no longer able to subsidise cheap food in the mults.

“For some, it seems that it is the end of the road: glasshouses are being closed and orchards are being grubbed,” said Futter.

“Increasingly, farmers are leaving the sector and using the land for non-agricultural uses because they simply cannot afford to continue subsidising the cheap food that the UK consumer has been used to.”

So regardless of Barclay and Defra’s optimism and headline-grabbing policy promises – many of which will undoubtedly disappear before the election happens – not much has changed from the grim forecasts we’ve bean hearing over the past year at least.

And ultimately, with obstacles like this, whoever ends up in charge at Defra, at the end of what looks like another hugely challenging year for the food sector, will have to pick up the pieces.

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