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UK Farmers Protest Post-Brexit Trade Practices Outside Parliament
Mar 26, 2024Farmers in a convoy of tractors drove outside Britain’s Parliament on Monday, protesting post-Brexit trade deals that have brought about what they view as substandard food imports and unfair trade practices.
Since its exit from the European Union in 2020, the U.K. has signed several trade deals that, according to British farmers, lack import checks and are allowing poorer quality food to come into Britain from countries with less stringent regulations.
British farmers contend that the cheaper agricultural imports undercut Britain’s domestic produce.
They also say they are suffering from rising costs and a shortage of seasonal workers, many of whom are foreign and whose recruitment is more difficult since Brexit because U.K. agriculture is no longer protected by the EU’s free-trade zone and the bloc’s farming rules.
Many British farmers backed Brexit out of opposition to the EU’s much-criticized Common Agricultural Policy. But now many say post-Brexit trade deals between the U.K. and countries including Australia and New Zealand have opened the door to cheap imports.
Organizers also criticize labeling that allows products to bear a Union Jack when they have not been grown or harvested in Britain.
The U.K. has also delayed checks on imports that were supposed to begin after the country’s final break with the EU at the end of 2020, a move farmers say threatens biosecurity.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promised to support U.K. farmers when he told the National Farming Union conference last month that the nation’s food security was a ‘vital part of our national security.’
Approximately 100 tractors from around the U.K converged in Westminster, horns blaring, with farmers displaying slogans such as ‘Support British farmers’ and ‘Brexit is a disaster.’
Protesters also say that the policy in England of paying farmers to create habitats for environmental reasons was taking land out of food production.
Liz Webster, a cattle and crop producer from western England and an organizer of the group Save British Farming, said the government had ‘totally betrayed us all.’
‘We’ve had enough,’ she told AFP, denouncing ‘substandard’ imports that were “undercutting’ British products.
‘Polling shows that the public back British farming and food and want to maintain our high food standards and support local producers,’ she said. ‘We need a radical change of policy and an urgent exit from these appalling trade deals which will decimate British food.’
British agriculture provides about 60% of the food consumed in the U.K., but farmers fear this share is falling.
Several demonstrations have taken place sporadically in recent months against the post-Brexit agricultural policy of the Conservative government, which has been in power for 14 years.
Some information in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
