By Kerry Maxwell, communications manager, British Poultry Council
Food inflation is squeezing budgets across the UK. The Bank of England has reported that food inflation remains higher than overall inflation, with July prices up 4% year-on-year. Driven by higher input costs, increased energy prices, labour costs, and global volatility, it is lower income households that will be disproportionately affected.
It’s times like these that reinforce the vital role our sector plays, whether it be scale, stability of supply, or as large employers. But addressing inflation means more than managing costs today. It requires securing and expanding the UK’s national food capability in the long-term: that is, our ability to produce affordable food sustainably.
Behind rising prices are a multitude of complex challenges. These are nothing new. I’ve harped on about them in past columns!
We all know how crucial a UK-EU reset is to securing efficient trade. It is no secret that gaps in investment are limiting our efficiency and ability to build forward. We all know that land needs to be allocated equitably between food production, nature recovery, and other vital infrastructure – I still think that the Land Use Framework, if it asks the right sort of questions, could play a huge role in balancing needs across the board.
We also all know that standard indoor production remains the backbone of the sector. It underpins our ability to produce safe and affordable poultry meat at scale. But without coordination through tools like the Land Use Framework and a UK-EU reset, we risk greater vulnerability to global shocks, not to mention declining self-sufficiency.
We don’t often name it, but it’s capability, the ability to keep producing in the face of global volatility, that underpins security. Our food security is one thing, but our capability is another thing entirely. It is foundational and demands investment at every point in the supply chain to allow our producers to thrive. I think that is the most important conversation we need to have: capability is not optional; it is the condition of security.