Rishi Sunak’s food summit in Downing Street has been criticized as full of “empty gestures and nothing more than a PR stunt” by representatives of the food and agricultural industry, who met with the prime minister for failing to discuss rising inflation or put in place measures to protect British food production.
The Farm to Fork summit, the first meeting of its kind, brought together farmers, food producers and some of Britain’s biggest supermarkets including Jeremy Clarkson’s agricultural advisor Caleb Cooper (pictured).
A representative of a trade body attending the summit described the meeting as an “empty meeting” without discussing any action on prices or inflation. “He was there for the Conservatives to show that they support farmers,” they said.
Another participant said the summit elicited a “low-key response” from attendees because it “did not touch on the fundamental problems of food inflation”.
“If you do nothing about the cost of living, the cost of production, access to labor and the affordability of food, you will never be able to solve the systemic problem,” said an attendee.
The summit was expected to address topics such as food price inflation, fairness within the supply chain, and helping farmers invest in local production, but there was no subsequent announcement on these issues. Ministers made no commitments in response to a call from the National Farmers Union (NFU) to stop Britain’s food self-sufficiency falling below its current level of 60%.
The summit was held against the backdrop of soaring inflation, driven in part by food and drink prices, which rose 19.1% in the year to March, according to official figures.
Earlier, consumer groups called on ministers to ask grocery chiefs to commit to lower prices to help consumers under pressure, following an agreement by supermarkets in France to reduce prices of key foodstuffs and a move by the French government to support food producers.
Hours before the meeting, Sunak published an open letter to farmers, promising to put UK farming at the center of future trade deals, and vowing never to allow chlorinated chicken and hormone-fed beef into the UK market.
Sunak’s pledges were welcomed by the National Farmers’ Union, which has repeatedly asked the prime minister to convene the food summit.
The union boss had previously criticized the government for making farmers “a pawn in trade deals”, including those struck with Australia and New Zealand by Sunak’s predecessor, Liz Truss, during her tenure as international trade secretary.
Tom Bradshaw, vice president of the National Farmers’ Union, said the union believed the government had “put food security on a par with energy security” at the summit, which he described as “a huge step forward”.
He added that farmers had struggled to get ministers to “provide flexibility to the food supply chain,” which he hoped would help reverse a recent decline in domestic production, as farmers cut back on the industry amid rising costs.
However, the government did not immediately respond to the NFU’s calls to make the summit an annual event.
The meeting, which according to one person was attended by between 60 and 70 people and lasted throughout the morning, began with a welcome from the Prime Minister, before the participants took part in four separate discussion groups.
Richard Griffiths, chief executive of the British Poultry Council, who attended the summit, believes the meeting represents only a “small step forward” for the food industry.
He welcomed the government’s promises regarding future trade deals, but said “more attention is needed in how we and the government promote British food”.
He said promising to support producers in international trade deals without laying out a plan on how to tackle food price inflation “was like taking one corner of a big problem and trying to solve it without going back to the rest”.
Lee Styles, secretary of the Lea Valley Growers Association, a trade body for greenhouse growers, described the food summit as “nothing more than a public relations stunt” with “nothing of substance” to help growers.
Stills, who did not attend the meeting, called on the government to take action to help with the labor shortage.
He described the current seasonal agricultural workers scheme as “not fit for purpose” because it only enables owners to work for six months, despite workers being needed for nearly twice that period, meaning that multiple groups must be trained each year to keep production flowing. .
“The idea of filling these roles with locals is absurd and has been around since the 1950s,” Stiles added.