British farmers are holding back on big investments as they brace for the UK’s exit from the European Union, their largest market and a vital source of subsidies.
Agriculture enjoyed a brief boost after Britain voted to leave the bloc last June, when a weaker pound lifted profits by about 12 per cent and subsidy payments by roughly 15 per cent, the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) estimates.
UK food and drink exports rose nearly 10 per cent to a record £20 billion in 2016, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said on Tuesday.
While more cash on hand usually spurs investment, farmers have become cautious as the benefit of the weaker pound fades and lifts the price of imported inputs such as fertilisers.
People will put investment plans on back burners as a result of that uncertainty
“There’s big uncertainty ahead,” said Stuart Roberts, a cereals and cattle farmer with 1,400 acres of land in Hertfordshire and Kent. “The benefits we were seeing – that was always going to be a short-term gain. Certainly, at the moment, we are not looking to do any big investments in the pure farming stuff like machinery, land, new tenancies.”
An NFU survey late last year showed British farmers on the whole plan to reduce spending on machinery by 26 per cent and land investment by 31 per cent over the next three years.
Some 37 per cent of English farmland marketed in 2016 attracted no offers by the end of the year, up from 13 per cent in 2015, data from property group Strutt and Parker shows.
Farmland values fell 2.6 per cent in the fourth-quarter of 2016 compared with the third quarter, property consultant Knight Frank said.
“Medium-term confidence has been dented by increasing uncertainty about the EU and the higher cost base,” NFU economist Anand Dossa said. “People will put investment plans on back burners as a result of that uncertainty.”
Appetite for bank finance from the agriculture, hunting and forestry sectors is still growing at about two per cent annually but has slipped from levels seen between 2012 and 2015, when demand rose by roughly 10 per cent a year, Bank of England figures show.