UK farmers must grow more fruit and veg, warns PM

Farmers need to grow more fruit and vegetables to ensure the UK is not overly reliant on foreign imports, the government has warned.

A new national food security index, external - which tracks overall production - found that just 17% of fruit and 55% of vegetables are grown in the UK.

New funding for growers was announced at a Downing Street food supply summit.

Critics say the £80m scheme does not go far enough to support farmers hit by extreme weather and rising costs.

The National Farmers' Union (NFU) warned that many of its members feared they would go bankrupt before they received the benefits of the extra funding.

It pointed to its recent survey of farmers' confidence that found 65% of those that replied said their profits were down or their business might go under.

NFU President Tom Bradshaw said of the government's plans: "These are long-term strategic ambitions and, thanks to the wettest eighteen months since 1836, many of our members face a serious short-term crisis and believe they may not survive long enough to benefit from these announcements."

The most recent statistics for the horticulture industry, external show that in 2022 the UK produced around 2.4m tonnes of vegetables and 652,000 tonnes of fruit, with a value of £1.8bn and £1bn respectively.

But it also imported £2.7bn worth of vegetables and £3.9bn worth of fruit.

The government released its new annual food security index, that covers all farming and food production sectors, on Tuesday.

It said that the index showed that generally the UK farming sector is at "its most productive since records began" and that domestic production of all food in the UK is at around 60% of consumption.

But it said that the UK fruit and vegetable sector is "significantly lagging behind" meat, dairy and grains.

It is now looking to "turbocharge" the UK's horticulture sector, including doubling public funding to £80m - with £10m given to orchard growers - in England.

Helen Browning, chief executive of the Soil Association, gave a cautious welcome to the news.

She told the BBC: "Many of us have been calling for more funding, more support for horticulture, for a very long time and so finally we are getting somewhere with this.

"Whether the money is going to be enough I don't know but we have to recognise that only 33% of adults and 12% of children eat their "five a day" so it's in the nation's interest that we support growing and consuming more British fruit and veg wherever we possible can."

Meanwhile, farmers of all types, across all parts of the UK, are still struggling with the impacts of the wet weather.

Industry body the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board has estimated that 15% less land will be planted with wheat this year, and an estimated 558,000 hectares of arable land will remain fallow, up from 311,000 hectares last year.

Liz Webster, of the campaign group Save British Farming, told the BBC: "It's an absolute disaster for the country going forward.

"There's going to be a massive straw shortage for next winter and there's going to be problems ahead with potato shortages and vegetable shortages."

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he would "always back British farmers" and that the new funding would see more food produced in the UK.

But Steve Reed, Labour's shadow environment secretary, said it was "14 years of Tory failure" that had left farmers "at breaking point".