Farming

Keir Starmer is to become the first Labour leader to address the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) since Gordon Brown in 2008. Starmer will tell farmers that Labour’s history owes as much to the countryside as it does to the city as he promises to bring the party closer to rural communities. The Labour leader will […]

Each dawn, sheep farmer Thomas Carrick works the land through freezing winter rain and snow, 2,000 feet up in the bleak Cumbrian fells. Like many British farmers, he is about to find out if life outside the EU is even colder and darker. Well used to weather dependent good and bad years, sheep farming is […]

Brexiteer James Dyson’s farming business only managed to make a profit in the last year because it benefited from EU subsidies, it has been reported. Beeswax Dyson Farming posted £3.4 million pre-tax profits last year, the Times reports, up from £2.7 million in 2018. But without a £3.4 million cash injection from the EU’s common agricultural […]

The government’s environment secretary has insisted that protections for food and farming standards are not necessary – because it was in the Conservative Party manifesto. On Monday, MPs voted to overturn measures aimed at protecting UK food standards in future trade deals. But defending the decision of government to vote against such protections, George Eustice […]

MPs voted 332 to 279 to overturn a House of Lords amendment to the Agriculture Bill which would have required agricultural and food imports to meet domestic standards. The Lords had made the change to block the import of foodstuffs produced abroad with lower animal welfare standards, amid warnings over chlorinated chicken or hormone-treated beef […]

Tory MPs have overturned measures aimed at protecting UK food standards after Brexit – despite signs of some rebels in Boris Johnson’s party. The House of Commons voted 332 votes to 279, majority 53, to disagree with a Lords amendment to the Agriculture Bill which would have required agricultural and food imports to meet domestic […]

Farmers are to hold a protest outside parliament to make their voices heard over the threat of Brexit deals to their livelihoods as MPs prepare to vote on the government’s Agriculture Bill. In a warning to the risk of Brexit to food standards, farmers will assemble at New Covent Garden from 1pm on Monday as […]

Labour’s Keir Starmer has called on Boris Johnson to guarantee high food and farming standards after Brexit by putting protections into law through the government’s agriculture bill. Ahead of a visit to National Farmers’ Union president Minette Batters’ farm in Wiltshire, Starmer warned that without action to protect standards there was a “real risk” of […]