Today new analysis from the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission reveals that the UK’s long-term food security is at risk from a dysfunctional food economy that’s failing the public and farmers. It unpicks the deep problems underlying the wave of farming protests and their impact on Britain’s health, nature and prosperity.

• Push for low-cost calories has cheapened British food over decades
• Billions in costs to health and nature are piling up, while farmers lose out
• Farming incomes have barely improved in real terms for 50 years
• Tiny number of big businesses now dominate Britain’s food chain
• UK’s long-term food security at risk in volatile world facing climate change
• Government must fix dysfunctional food economy for public benefit

Paying the Price is the second report from the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission seeking to spark a frank conversation about food, money and power. The first, The False Economy of Big Food, made national headlines with the staggering revelation that unhealthy food was costing the UK £268 billion a year. In Paying the Price, FFCC’s Dr Charlie Taverner turns to farmers and the food chain, and explores the profound impact of how Britain’s food has been progressively cheapened over decades. The push for low-cost calories hasn’t made healthy food affordable to everyone and has come at a cost to people’s health, nature and the planet. In a volatile world facing the effects of climate change and turbulent politics, the country’s long-term food security has been undermined.

Paying the Price offers a new perspective on why farmers are so fearful about changes to inheritance tax and the just-announced ‘reset’ to environmental schemes in England. The report explains why farmers feel stuck on a treadmill. Their real incomes have barely risen for 50 years, as the value of their wheat, milk and meat has been eroded through pressure from imports and the rise of ultra-processed food. Farms have been forced to scale up or intensify their production, with tens of thousands of small farms disappearing. Farmers have little power because successive governments have allowed Big Food and Big Ag corporations, many of them multinationals, to dominate the supply chain. From supermarkets and abattoirs back to grain dealers and fertiliser makers, the biggest businesses exert a strong influence on government policy. British households spend less on food than almost anywhere else, but this has come at a heavy cost for the public as well as farmers: the shrinking farming sector has diminished rural communities; the UK’s self-sufficiency in critical foods like fruit and vegetable has fallen; the soil, water and wildlife on which food security depends have been degraded; and the reliance on a small number of food and agriculture businesses weakens the country’s ability to cope with shocks like floods or breakdowns in trade. Meanwhile, the rising power of financial interests has allowed billions of pounds of value to be extracted from UK food and farming.

The report recommends that politicians and industry directly tackle this problem of ‘cheapness’ and policy-making needs to become much more ambitious. The public, farmers and businesses need to demand that leaders change the rules of the game, so that growing and selling healthy, sustainably grown food in ways that build food security and resilience is properly rewarded. Politicians should test much bolder policy measures that change the food system and not just farming, such as higher standards on trade, investing in priority sectors like fruit and vegetables, and establishing a Food Market Regulator with a public value focus.

Sue Pritchard, CEO, Food, Farming and Countryside Commission said,

“FFCC’s research reveals clearly the huge cost to the economy and on people’s lives from a food system which consistently cheapens food. As the costs grow, so do the calls for real change from ordinary people across the country who have to deal every day with the impacts on their health and environment.

With Paying the Price, we are exposing the real consequences of a food system now dominated by large food businesses on UK farmers. It makes very clear what is at risk, to the UK’s economy and food security of continuing to prioritise low-cost, unhealthy food. Most importantly it sets out what government can do to level the playing field in favour of good business, supporting farmers, improving citizens’ health and strengthening our national resilience.”

Helen Browning OBE, CEO, Soil Association said:

“Britain's food isn't really cheap, because the real cost on people's health and nature is being borne elsewhere. Government needs to make sure that polluters pay for the harms they are creating and that proper incentives are in place to reward good food and good farming. As farmers, we need our supply chain - the processors and the retailers - to work with us, to share risk, and come up with new ways of making healthy, sustainable food available to everyone.”

Prof Tim Jackson, Director, Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity, University of Surrey (and author of The False Economy of Big Food):

“Big Food is flooding the food chain with supposedly low-cost calories which are disastrous for our health and for the planet. Households are squeezed at one end of the chain and farmers are squeezed at the other. The pressure on farmers to produce more and more for meagre returns is damaging nature and risking our ability to eat well and stay healthy. As the evidence mounts, the case for a new food economy becomes ever more unassailable.”