UK ‘sleepwalking’ into major food shortage crisis

The UK is “sleepwalking into food shortages” and prices may rise further, farmers have warned, citing the rising costs of fuel, fertiliser and feed.

As per recent reports, British farms are turning down production to deal with the increased prices of fertiliser, some of which have spiked by almost 200 percent.

“We’re sleepwalking into food shortages and that’s a fact,” a farmer in Snowdonia, north Wales, told GB News.

British farmers use around one million tonnes of manufactured nitrogen each year, to grow crops for human consumption, and grass for animals to eat, according to Anthony Hopkins, chief crops adviser at the National Farmers’ Union (NFU). Yet they are facing unprecedented costs for this vital ingredient.

Fertiliser prices shot up last month due to global factors including reduced supplies from Russia, disruptions to the supply chain, and a Chinese export ban. Rising wholesale gas prices had been pressurising the production costs of fertilisers for farmers since a few months now.

As per reports, the price of nitrogen fertiliser, which is used on wheat, vegetables and pulses, has risen from £300 per tonne to £1,000, implying that shoppers may see a spike in the cost of household items like cereal, animal feed, oil and beer.

The warning, from food producers, comes on top of the highest rise in food prices in a decade.

“The issue we have now is, the cost of fertiliser has increased and will have an impact on our business decisions”, farmer Andrew Williamson, who grows winter wheat, rapeseed, barley and oats, BBC.

“I don’t want to be alarmist about food security and food prices, but off the back of what we’ve seen in Ukraine and energy security, we also need to start thinking about food security,” he added.

Farmers’ warning comes amid reports that supermarkets are limiting how much sunflower oil, much of which comes from Ukraine.