A shortage of labour is causing huge problems for farmers and the UK hospitality industry.
Every week British farmers have to plough back tons of vegetables, salad crops and onions into the ground because there’s no labour to do the picking.
Since the UK has exited the EU, the cost of labour has increased by 34 per cent. What a crazy situation to now be in.
It’s so sad that we have no workers in our own country who want to fill these positions as they could impact our food chain and lower our costs. The supermarkets need to support British farmers and producers and do their bit, and we need to see more locally grown produce on all our supermarket shelves.
With fuel and fertiliser prices also soaring, this is having another devastating effect on UK food producers and farmers. We import 50 per cent of our vegetables and 75 per cent of our fruit when we don’t need to do either – we have lots of beautiful seasonal produce of our own to enjoy.
Our poor egg and pork farmers have had a rough ride with the corn prices soaring, and we all need to buy local to support our local producers. I know when I talk to my customers, they want to support local and the more we talk about this, the more the average consumer will understand all the reasons behind why it’s so important to do this, it’s not just marketing chat or anti-supermarkets.
We need to push these stories out as much as we can and explain what is happening to our farmers and food producers so that local communities understand what is behind the food that they are buying and eating.

Cheap European eggs
I would hate not to have local eggs in my kitchen or the farm shop or the pub menu. I don’t want to have cheap European eggs being the only thing that I can buy. It makes no sense at all.
We have thousands of pigs and I want to eat British-farmed pork, both at home with my family and for my customers on my menus and in our farm shop. Why? Because I know we have the highest standards of farming welfare in the world and that the animal has been treated fairly for the whole of its life.
I’ll keep on keeping on about this as we all need to take heed. I can’t stress more about the need to focus on greater food security in the UK and if we support local farmers and producers here in England, we are guaranteed to be eating safe food from our plates. We all need to love local trust local.

by Barbara Cossins