UK agriculture at a crossroads

Abstract

UK farming is at a crossroads. Its continued dependency on decoupled direct payments, shortage of investment finance, difficulties in changing cost structure and the reduced scope to differentiate and diversity sources of farm revenue, exacerbated by the unprecedented increases in the price of key inputs, means farmers face stark choices with fewer remaining effective management options. This study reviews two previous crossroads moments in UK agriculture and considers how the current crossroads moment is different from those. It then provides an estimate of the impacts of the current challenges on the size of the future farming population, based on the methodology used by McInerney. The inter-farm distribution of assets, debts and earnings, differences in farm specialisation, availability of finance and farm-succession arrangements mean it is not easy to identify which individual farms are most likely to fail. Nevertheless, upland grazing, lowland grazing and mixed farm-types seem to be the most vulnerable. Assuming low but realistic returns to fixed and working capital and income/farm, the future farming population is estimated to be 138,000: a 23% reduction from the number of 2019 farming population. The population falls to 15,000 if all subsidies paid in 2021 are removed from the calculation. The actual fall will be smaller than this because farmers will develop new revenue streams and farming systems. But a reduction even approaching 23% is likely to result in more generous assistance being made available, and perhaps even a reversal of some key elements of the new policies.