They love us, they love us not. They love us, they love us not?
In March, farming minister Dame Angela Eagle told the Farmers’ Guardian that the country’s food security could be improved by increasing the amount of food we grow in the UK.
This comes three years after Keir Starmer, then leader of the opposition, told the NFU Conference: “We can’t lose sight of food production. We can’t lose sight of farming as a business. We need sustainable food production.”
Though this sounds like a ringing endorsement for British farmers, you would be hard-pressed to find one who feels this government has been an enthusiastic supporter of the work we do.
Indeed, last month at the Norfolk Farming Conference, chair Belinda Clarke MBE reported that, in her conversations with the existing government, the UK’s agriculture sector had been described as both a ‘backwater’ and an ‘irrelevance’.
Public support
Still, the great British public are supportive of the nation’s farmers and food producers. Red Tractor’s Trust in Food Index, published in June 2025, reported that ‘90% of Brits want to see more food produced in the UK’.
Nine in 10 of those surveyed believed British food to be safe and 83% noted high animal welfare standards as a reason to trust food produced at home.
Of course, there is a ‘but’. A YouGov survey conducted in 2022 revealed that just 54% of Brits prefer to buy produce from the UK when shopping for food. This compares to three-quarters of Italians surveyed and 67% of French participants.
Lack of understanding
In 2024, as part of its Open Farm Sunday programme, LEAF reported that ‘only 12% of the nation can claim to be well informed about what farmers do for the countryside’, while about 60% of the respondents were not interested in understanding more about the work farmers do.
There is insufficient data on whether the nation still holds the rural idyll of a green and pleasant land as a significant part of its cultural identity, but it is clear that there is an increasing gulf between the producers of food in Britain and its consumers.
This is not just because of an increasingly urban population. Rural communities that were once entwined with the farms and land surrounding them are instead becoming fragmented and disconnected from them.
Bucking this trend is vital for the future of the sector. Engaging people with farming, food and the countryside is necessary, not only to maintain demand for British food, but also to rejuvenate the workforce that produces it.
Since 2003, there has been a 10% decrease in the number of people working in agriculture in the UK and 70% of British farmers are over 55. This will, I suspect, not come as a surprise to many Pig World readers, who will likely list staffing as one of the foremost challenges for their business.
The big question is, how do we bridge the divide?
Time to be bolder
Initiatives like Open Farm Sunday undoubtedly work well for arable farmers, who can welcome families to swoon over swaying fields of oilseed rape, or for estates that can discuss their farm with visitors drawn to their wetland regeneration project.
However, we are operating in a time where we are working hard to increase biosecurity protections on our farms and vigilance against the increasingly brazen challenge presented by activists.
AHDB has recently relaunched its campaign to sell pork as a product to consumers. Perhaps it is time for a collective consideration of how we sell pigs as both a career to the next generation and as a key part of so many rural communities to the people that live in and around them.
Perhaps it is time for us to be bolder in talking about what we do. Maybe it is time for us to come together to champion the innovation, passion and ambition within our sector that is so evident to all of us.
Perhaps, too, we need to reach out into our communities. For several years, at North Farm Livestock, we have committed to offering work experience to students from local schools each year and to working with our local agricultural college to connect with young people looking for apprenticeships in general agricultural or livestock practice.
Similarly, we are supporting key events within our community this year. We are sponsors of both the Aylsham Show and the pig section of the Royal Norfolk Show. Our business will only survive, let alone thrive, if the communities in which we farm do so, too.