Farmers across the UK are increasingly turning to alternative crops and away from food production as they grapple with poor harvests and scaled-back subsidies.
National Farmers Union president Tom Bradshaw warned on Monday that many had looked to rewilding or crops for biofuels in order to shield from risks of growing food.
This comes after news last week that England had suffered its second-worst harvest on record this year due to heavy rainfall.
Lower wheat, winter barley, spring barley, oats and oilseed rape yields were estimated to have collectively hit farmers by an estimated £600 million, analysts said at the time.
Farmers have also faced a 50% cut to subsidies for growing food after the UK’s departure from the European Union.
Policy since has seen payments offered for the likes of natural environment and biodiversity improvements, alongside maintained food production, though Bradshaw warned no assessments had been carried out into how these could affect output.
“Our members will not go out of business producing people’s food,” he said in a Financial Times interview.
“Clarity would really help members because then they can decide if they want to be part of that journey or not. Right now they are taking the money because they have to.”
He called on ministers to ramp up support for the industry ahead of this month’s Autumn Budget, including by urgently offering grants from a planned flood recovery fund.
“If [they] don’t get that support package right, if they don’t enable the investment, if they don’t get the planning system working, then ultimately [farmers] will have no choice: they will de-risk their businesses,” he said.