A slump in UK agriculture would spell disaster for the entire food chain, warned National Farmers’ Union president Tim Bennett.

In his speech on food security at the Sentry Conference this week, Bennett said a decline in domestic agricultural production would seriously harm the UK’s billion pound food manufacturing sector as well as drive farmers out of business.

The result would be a redistribution of employment out of the UK, he claimed.

Bennett said: “The food manufacturing sector is now the largest single manufacturing sector in the UK. 7,000 businesses; 423,000 jobs; £20 billion gross value added. If we simply imported all our raw material, other parts of the food chain would still carry on: wholesalers, food distribution and retailers would still be needed. But I don’t think a lot of the manufacturing sector would stay in this country, it would move off-shore to where production was.”

He criticised the government for regarding domestic agricultural production as a commodity that can be “turned on and off like a tap”.

“There is an issue of critical mass; which once lost would be very difficult, perhaps impossible, to regain. To some extent this has occurred in the pig sector. There is a risk, that we must guard against at all odds, that the same could happen in beef,” he said.

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