Farmers marched to Britain’s parliament on more than 120 tractors on Monday to protest against post-Brexit rules.
Protesters were mobilised by the campaign groups Save British Farming and Fairness for Farmers of Kent. Farmers objected to cheap food imports and what they saw as unsupportive government policies that threaten the country’s food security. Liz Webster from Save British Farming stated:
“We are totally fed up with the government. This one is particularly bad, taking us for granted and really just leaving us to fend for ourselves, and our businesses are under stress. We have a trade bloc between us and our biggest market in Europe. But also, they ended up leaving Britain as an unfair, unlevel playing field, in that we have trade barriers.”
Webster argued that the lack of fair trading rules allowed lower quality goods to swamp the UK market, threatening domestically produced goods. She noted the supermarkets’ preference for cheaper imports over home-grown goods, which had led to the disregarding of contractual obligations and forced farmers out of business.
We want them to devise a food plan.
She criticised the 2020 Agriculture Act, accusing politicians of favouring environmental concerns over the interests of the farming community. Farmers attributed their financial difficulties to the influx of imported goods grown to different standards but allowed to enter the UK market.
“Tractors with different carbon emissions and chemicals that have been banned from Europe for maybe 30 years are still used in other parts of the world, and then the products are shipped into Britain. So that’s one of the major complaints.”
Angry farmers thus pointed to poor enforcement of environmental standards in imported agricultural products, emphasising the need for comprehensive, forward-thinking solutions to address the interlinked challenges of food security and environmental protection.
