Minette Batters’ long-awaited Farming Profitability Review, published today, delivers a forensic challenge to one of the most persistent assumptions in Whitehall: that farming is economically marginal and therefore politically expendable.
The review confronts head-on the pervasive view that farming does not matter because it contributes just 0.6% of GDP. In raw terms, farming directly adds £10.5 billion to the UK economy (GVA, 2024). But Batters is clear that this figure tells only a fraction of the story – in counties like Dorset, where farming underpins not just food production but jobs, land use, water management and village economies, the consequences of that miscounting are felt daily.
She calls on Defra and the Office for National Statistics to reassess how farming is counted in GDP, pointing to international evidence showing that better accounting of supply-chain multipliers can increase a sector’s recorded value by as much as 80%.
UK farming underpins an agri-food supply chain worth £150 billion – around 6% of total UK economic output – supporting 4.2 million jobs across manufacturing, logistics, retail and hospitality. That is 13% of all employment in Great Britain. The sector also generates £25 billion a year in food, drink and feed exports. Remove domestic farming, the review argues, and that entire economic ecosystem is destabilised.
At the same time, UK food self-sufficiency has fallen to 65%, down from 78% in the mid-1980s. Britain is now increasingly reliant on volatile international markets while holding its own farmers to higher environmental and welfare standards than most competitors. In rural counties like Dorset, that decline is not abstract – it plays out in land use decisions, livestock numbers and the long-term viability of family farms.
Batters describes farming as ‘our only remaining primary manufacturing sector that still exists in every county across the country’ – reframing agriculture not as a lifestyle choice, but as nationally distributed economic infrastructure.
The review is blunt about cost pressures. Since the start of the agricultural transition, machinery prices have risen by 31%, while wage and energy costs have surged. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts input costs will be 30% higher in 2026 than in 2020. Yet the £2.4 billion English farming budget has remained broadly static since 2007, never uprated for inflation.
Trade policy comes in for particular criticism. While countries such as the United States, Australia and New Zealand routinely include farmer representatives in official trade delegations, the UK does not. Despite the UK being widely recognised as ‘one of the most prized food markets in the world’, Batters notes that overseas delegations arrive with clear priorities for their agricultural sectors, while British farmers are largely absent from negotiations.
‘Every trade delegation like the recent one to India, led by the Prime Minister, should have a farmer representative from each of the Devolved Administrations,’ she argues, ‘sitting alongside the best of British businesses – selling British and Welsh lamb, British and Scotch beef, Northern Ireland pork and English apples and cheese to international markets.’
The review recommends formally including farming representatives in future UK trade delegations, bringing Britain into line with competitor nations where farmers sit at the table when market access is negotiated.
Section 2.3 shifts from diagnosis to opportunity. Batters argues that government support should focus on growing demand for British produce at home and abroad, rather than subsidising survival. She points to British Airways’ sourcing of Rodda’s clotted cream, Netherend Farm butter and Tiptree jam as evidence that strategic public procurement and export alignment can open markets for distinctive regional brands.
A reset of supply-chain law to curb unfair practices and rebalance power between farmers, processors and retailers, alongside a clear shift away from paying landowners simply for holding acreage.
The recommendations are wide-ranging, but the direction of travel is unmistakable. Batters argues that food security must be treated as critical national infrastructure and hard-wired into planning, trade and economic policy, rather than handled as an environmental afterthought. She calls for a reset of supply-chain law to curb unfair practices and rebalance power between farmers, processors and retailers, alongside a clear shift away from paying landowners simply for holding acreage.
Planning reform is framed not as a marginal issue but as an economic lever. In counties like Dorset – where reservoirs, slurry storage, renewable infrastructure and modern livestock buildings are routinely delayed or blocked – slow planning decisions directly cap productivity, resilience and environmental progress.
The review argues that faster approval of on-farm reservoirs, renewable energy and modern buildings is essential if farms are to improve productivity, strengthen resilience and meet rising welfare and environmental standards.
Above all, the review stresses the need for policy stability. In a sector where decisions on breeding, planting and investment are made years before any return is realised, operating without long-term regulatory and financial certainty is not merely inefficient, but fundamentally destabilising. Without clarity on trade standards, environmental requirements and future support, Batters warns that confidence will continue to drain from the sector, taking investment, skills and domestic food production capacity with it.
The underlying challenge is cultural as much as economic: and in a county where agriculture still shapes landscapes, employment and supply chains from the Blackmore Vale to the coast, that cultural shift would be hard to ignore. The review asks government to abandon the complacent idea that farming is simply ‘growing things we can always import from elsewhere’.
Instead, it makes the case – firmly and with evidence – that farming builds value, sustains jobs, anchors rural economies and underwrites national resilience.
What gives the review its weight is not who commissioned it, but who wrote it. This is not a ministerial vision document or a civil service compromise, but a practical blueprint grounded in how farming actually functions – economically, operationally and over time. Batters’ argument is not that farming could become a cornerstone of the UK economy, but that it already is.
The question the review leaves hanging is no longer whether farming matters, but whether government is prepared to act as if it does.
Read the full report here
