ANOTHER warning to consumers, retailers and governments that the days of cheap food are numbered comes this week from the National Beef Association.
The association says complacency over long-term food supply and the effects of low income on farmers would soon begin to hit people’s pockets.
NBA director Kim Haywood said not enough notice was being taken of the increased population pressure on the world’s food and energy production resources – or the impending impact of millions more people in China, India and South America demanding their share of access to commodity markets that were once the almost exclusive reserve of the leading Western nations.
“Fuel, food and other basic raw material prices will all feel the heat when the full force of this demand is unleashed,” said Ms Haywood.
“Signs of this new pressure on the food market are already evident in the UK through corrective rises for previously undervalued ex-farm dairy products and grain and they will eventually exert themselves in the seriously underappreciated red meat sector too.”
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Last week NFU president Peter Kendall warned that two decades of ever lower grocery bills were coming to an end.
“It’s been a disappointing 20 years and I’m glad we’re moving out of the era of cheap food,” said Mr Kendall in a speech delivered at the showground at Llanelwedd on the eve of the Royal Welsh Show.
Mr Kendall said retailers would have to accept that farmers needed a fair price for their products or they would not bother to produce them, and the result of that would be ever greater shortages.
And he said the end of the era of cheap food would benefit the poorer countries of the world, where most of the population were farmers. Their income had been undermined by Western countries dumping food surpluses and they would be encouraged to produce more if they began to receive a fair price for their labours.
The NBA is worried about home-grown produce, and is warning that diehard attitudes could kill off important domestic supply routes.
Ms Haywood said the UK Government was still fixated by its low food price inflation policies even though it had conceded that climate change meant food could no longer be produced, and energy consumed, as if the world had infinite resources.
But she said supermarkets continued to pursue outdated pricing policies, which meant home-produced beef was consistently sold for less than it cost to produce.
And most consumers, who appeared to show no real appreciation of the true value of food, were unaware that current retail pricing systems made future supplies of British beef so untenable that current supply levels could not possibly continue.
“Some huge shocks are on the way and the NBA is worried that too many people, across all spectrums, will be taken by surprise,” said Ms Haywood. “Calamity – where shrinking global food supplies coincide with a reduction in UK food production – can only be avoided if food producers earn enough income to stay in business.”
Ms Haywood said hopeful signs of change were beginning to emerge in the cereals and dairy sectors. Prices were rising because harvests had been hit by extreme weather conditions caused by climate change or because of shortages caused by so many farmers abandoning milk production. Beef production could be the next sector to suffer unless struggling farmers are encouraged by the promise of better returns to persuade them to stay in business.
“And if government, retailers and consumers take no action because they think ample world beef supplies will continue to be available they can think again because the five-year forecast is that there will not be enough surplus beef in the world to top up EU supplies – never mind satisfy new consumers in emerging economic hot spots.”
