Asda boss Lord Rose is among those food industry experts who have warned that the UK is facing a food crisis of a severity which has not been seen in decades.
He made his comments as it was revealed that Kantar revealed that the price of groceries in Britain is increasing at its fastest rate in 11 years, adding an extra £271 to the amount average households will pay this year. Asked by the BBC if a 5.9 per cent rise was the maximum we would see, Lord Rose replied: “They are going to go higher and they are going to stay high for quite some time, I fear.”
Earlier in the week, NFU Scotland President Martin Kennedy criticised retailers’ ‘short-termism’ and the government for not taking food security seriously enough. He wrote, “This perfect storm – and I don’t use the term lightly – driven by Brexit, Covid and now the dreadful war in Ukraine will have repercussions for years to come. We will continue to play our part as food producers, but we simply cannot do that without proper support and prices for the quality we produce.
“While farmers and crofters can see this food security issue coming at us, there are many who, sadly, are far too blinkered and only interested in the short term. For far too long, we have not paid nearly enough attention as a nation to the most important energy source we rely on, which is food.”
Welsh farmer and broadcaster Gareth Wyn Jones told GB News, “We’re sleepwalking into food shortages and that’s a fact. We’ve got absolutely ridiculous fertiliser prices and we can’t forget that half the food produced in this world comes from artificial fertiliser.”
The NFU has urged the government not to reduce import tariffs on food as a response to rising prices. “We have got the third most affordable food here in the world and with the retail price war that’s going on we have probably got the most affordable,” NFU president Minette Batters told journalists, adding that she did not believe lower food prices would be sustainable. “Just lowering the tariff wall does not even begin to deal with the problem. It is a very complex problem that needs long-term strategy put in place to deal with the short-, medium- and long-term.”
Photo: NFU Scotland director Martin Kennedy
Photo source: NFUS