The National Farmers’ Union picked 9 September to warn that Britain is producing less of its everyday food than at any point in 30 years, and within hours the farmers the report speaks for were pulling the warning apart on The Farming Forum. Not because they think the trend is fine, but because many doubt the measure, the messenger and the machinery of government that would have to fix it. The industry’s own base is far from united behind its headline message.
By TFF News | 22 September 2026 | Business
The conversation drew 100 visible contributions between 9 September and 21 September 2026, was viewed 3,417 times and collected 196 reactions, an average of 1.96 per contribution. The figures describe this conversation only; it is not a representative survey of the sector.
A warning the room only half believed
The conversation opened with a link to The Times’ coverage of the NFU’s new report, and a rare note of optimism: “If trends continue then hopefully better returns on the horizon.” The report itself, Ready to Grow, published by the NFU on 9 September, says UK self-sufficiency has fallen in 10 of 11 everyday foods over 30 years while agri-food import volumes have risen 70%, and calls on government to set domestic production targets. Farmers Weekly’s report of the launch puts self-sufficiency at 60% by value in 2025 and notes that 65% of wheat and barley in 2024-25 came from cereal farms operating at a loss.
One contributor brought numbers of his own from a recent Farm Gate podcast: “1984, peak of our self-sufficiency at 78%, we could feed 44 million.” and “Now we can feed 45 million but self-sufficiency is 60%.” Those figures hold up: AHDB puts the historic peak at 78% in 1984 against roughly 60% by value now, while Defra’s UK Food Security Report 2024 records production at 62% of supply for all food and 75% for indigenous-type food in 2023, and describes the recent trend as broadly stable. The gap between “declining for 30 years” and “broadly stable lately” is precisely where the conversation dug in.
What does the measure actually measure?
The sharpest strand of the conversation questioned whether the self-sufficiency percentage means anything at all. One contributor asked “I’m interested to know how pineapples, avacados etc factor into such stats”, and another ran the same logic through calories rather than value: “Helpfully, the UK is over 100% self sufficient in calorific production.” His conclusion was blunt: “Im saying self suffiency in foodstuffs is impossible due to diet. So if something is impossible, why chase it?”
Others pointed at the inputs behind the output. “What is self-sufficiency anyway when so much fertiliser, pesticides and fuel imported?” asked one contributor, a point the NFU report does not resolve. The most constructive reframing came late in the conversation: “we should defintely be self sufficient in what we can easily grow here – meat, milk, some veg, some fruit”, with imports of what Britain cannot grow “measured separately”.
Blame flows in every direction
The NFU took as much criticism as the government. One contributor argued the union helped build the structure it now laments: “For decades they have been told that their open support for consolidation and centralization was a road to nowhere.” Her prescription was tactical rather than bitter: “The NFU need to explain the importance of home production in language Government understands; increased tax revenue, reduced welfare payments.”
Retail structure drew the same charge. “Supermarkets, balance sheets and Shareholders are more important than any self sufficiency and native businesses products and produce survival.” wrote one livestock farmer. On government, the historical framing was widely shared: “If you went back to post war and asked the governments of the time why they were supporting the production of food, it was because they knew what it was like to not have it.” The scepticism about ministerial language was equally blunt: “Talk is cheap, its actions that count”, wrote the contributor who had earlier dismissed the metric itself.
Doubts about delivery
A long strand tested whether Defra could deliver a production target even if it were set. One contributor cited figures he said were given at an EFRA Committee session, 1,600 staff in 2016 against 7,000 in 2026; another pushed back that the growth was the cost of repatriating work from Brussels: “they have been stable for several years after a rise to cope with COVID and Brexit since when they have been downsizing. Current target is 21% reduction by 2029.” The Institute for Government’s civil service staffing explainer confirms Defra saw significant proportional growth after the referendum because of its Brexit responsibilities; the conversation’s specific counts are the contributors’ own and were contested in place.
What went unchallenged was the verdict on output. “That they’ve had 10 years to implement the SFI and are still changing it every 4 minutes suggests a lack of leadership, direction and competence.” No contributor argued the department’s record was good, only about why.
The numbers behind the nerves
Beneath the argument about measures sat harder production signals. “we have over 300,00 less suckler cows in the UKs national herd thats just in 12 years” wrote one contributor, and the substance of that checks out: Farmers Weekly reported in April that the suckler herd stood at 1.24 million head in December 2025, 313,000 fewer breeding beef cows than in 2015, a 20% contraction. The same contributor put land loss at “some 15-30,000 acres of productive farm land to development every year”, a figure the conversation did not verify.
The security case was put in shipping terms. Modern food imports arrive in vessels many times the size of wartime convoys, one contributor argued, through “a limited number of deep water ports”, before landing on the line that best summarised the worried half of the room: “We need to prove we can feed our own people.” Another pointed at fish supply chains as a live example, arguing “This does demonstrate the point of security in home production.”
The question the trade is left with
The NFU wants production targets; a fair part of its own membership thinks the metric behind them is close to meaningless, and nobody in the conversation expected the machinery to deliver. Meanwhile the physical base keeps shrinking: fewer suckler cows, loss-making cereals, land going to development. The unresolved question for the trade is which side of that gap to plan for. If government adopts targets, input suppliers, processors and land agents face a policy-driven rebuild of domestic capacity. If it does not, the 30-year drift continues and the trade’s addressable market contracts with it. Farmers themselves appear to be hedging: arguing about the yardstick while watching the herd numbers.
Read the source conversation and analysis
Read the full conversation on The Farming Forum here.
Download the full conversation analysis as a slide deck: Conversation analysis deck (PDF).
This conversation had been viewed 3,417 times on The Farming Forum when counted on 22 September 2026. Want your brand in the room when farmers talk business?
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