Liz Webster, who farms 647 hectares in Wiltshire, has watched the price she can get for her beef cattle collapse by about £400 per animal – a brutal blow when feed, energy and fertiliser are all soaring. The livestock typically fetch £2,000 to £3,000 each, but a flood of cheaper meat from Australia, arriving under one of the government’s post-Brexit trade deals, has slashed farmers’ incomes while supermarket prices for beef remain broadly unchanged.
“It’s just inevitable that if it continues, British food will disappear, unless it’s niche, appealing to a particular wealthy market,” Webster said. “In the mainstream supermarkets British food won’t be able to complete.”
“Brexit trade deals slash £400 per beef cow; farmers warn British food will become a luxury niche.”
The damage extends far beyond beef. A study published last year found farm exports to the EU – Britain’s biggest market – had fallen by nearly half (47%) in quantity and 35% in value, with the variety of exports shrinking by a third. Separate analysis by the National Farmers’ Union earlier this year showed poultry exports down 38%, beef 24%, lamb 14% and dairy 16%. Meanwhile, Brexit has already added £7bn to UK food prices for consumers, a 2023 study found.
Tom Bradshaw, president of the NFU, said farmers had been battered by Covid, energy shocks from the wars in Ukraine and Iran, and extreme weather on top of Brexit. “There’s been so many global challenges, to try and decipher how much is down to leaving the EU and how much down to global turmoil is difficult,” Bradshaw said. “But we always warned that [the issue with Brexit] wasn’t going to be the immediate impact, it was sort of a death by a thousand cuts, a slow burn, and that’s exactly what we’re now seeing.”
Brexit upended three pillars of British farming: withdrawal from the EU’s common agricultural policy, the subsidy system in place since the mid-1970s; trade policy changes that opened the door to imports produced to lower standards; and new trade friction with the EU, once the biggest export market. Combined with tightening environmental and animal welfare rules, visa shortages for seasonal workers, and soaring input costs, the pressures have pushed many farmers to the edge. The rare breed of Gloucester cattle in the Cotswolds, already under strain, may become even rarer as the crisis deepens.