British lamb producers are cranking up the pressure on retailers to pay them a fairer price, as a ‘perfect storm’ of plummeting farmgate and wholesale prices and soaring input costs threatens to put farmers out of business.

The NFU has written to all the mults, urging them to step up their support for British lamb producers. “We are telling them very clearly, if you don’t get behind our producers now, they might not be there in future,” said chief livestock adviser Pete Garbutt.

Producers wanted retailers to pay them a fairer proportion of the retail price, Garbutt said.

According to the NFU, retail lamb prices remain high even though farmgate prices have fallen by a third and December wholesale prices for legs of lamb were down 17% year-on-year. Just 45% of the retail price now went back to farmers whereas it was 60% a year ago, Garbutt said. “Someone is taking money from the middle ground”.

Retailers had shown “a decent level of engagement” on the issue, but they now needed to follow this up with tangible commitments, he added. He singled out Sainsbury’s, which announced a 60p/kg premium for its lamb development group earlier this year, and also highlighted Morrisons, which he said was paying above the market rate and had a year-round commitment to source British lamb.

Farmgate and wholesale prices have collapsed recently because of a flood of cheaper imports from New Zealand as a well as increased supply of British lamb as a result of the wet weather last year.

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