The Farming Profitability Review and Exports

The Farming Profitability Review by Baroness Minette Batters was published on 18 December 2025.  At 154 pages, including appendices, it’s a chunky piece of work.  The Review provides 57 separate Recommendations for action.  With this amount of effort going into it, the Review is well worth reading, and a link to the full Review is here:   farming-profitability-review.pdf

This is one of a number of articles looking at particular Recommendations from the Review that catch the eye.

Farming is part of the global food supply and most producers are tied-in to some extent with global food prices and trends, and are aware of the potential for exports: 

Recommendation 15: The GBFAB [Great British FARM Advisory Board - see Recommendation 13] to develop a meaningful plan for growing our exports 30% by 2030, using the balance scorecard to balance exports with demand from the home market and building in the ambition in sector missions. Using this plan as a basis, the government is to develop a coherent approach to trade negotiations and ensure continued support for our network of attachés to open global markets.

                                                                                            Farming Profitability Review – M Batters, 2025

This sounds great.  A vibrant export-focused sector trading worldwide, pushed out through trade deals and the UK’s embassies and High Commissions across the world.

That will drive demand for British produce and may have multiplier effects:  the idea of halo status being given to British food through demand in export markets must surely be seen as a good thing.  For example, if Japanese consumers highly value British heritage apples then the prospect of that status reflecting back to the UK and being reflected in domestic consumer demand seems reasonable. 

But is a focus on the relatively niche and difficult area of food exports really what is needed at the moment?  The Review itself says:

• "Currently we produce only 65% (2024) of all food purchased domestically and in recent decades UK farming has supplied a decreasing proportion of the UK’s food, falling from 78% in 1984.”                                                                                                                                                 Farming Profitability Review, p.7

Drilling down further, the UK Food Security Report 2024 looked at the percentage of UK-growable food (so excluding produce such as bananas and mangoes) out of the whole market, identifying it at 75%: 

• “The UK’s overall balance of trade and domestic production remains broadly stable. The UK continues to source food from domestic production and trade at around an overall 60:40 ratio. Key statistic: The production-to-supply ratio was at 62% for all food and 75% for indigenous foods (meaning those that can be grown in the UK) in 2023, showing a small increase from 61% and 74% in 2021.”                                                                                                                                                                  UK Food Security Report 2024

Is a focus on the export market enough to shift the dial for UK agriculture or is it instead a glamorous distraction that might take an enormous amount of effort, resource and attention, but ultimately not result in material improvements for the sector?  

In a world where 25% of the domestic food is imported but could be produced in the UK, should the energies and talents that would be deployed developing export markets instead be used to look at import substitution and making the sector’s output sufficiently attractive so that when UK agriculture has to compete with imports following trade deals, it is able to do so strongly?

                                                                                                               Additional research by Lucy Mostyn

Previous articles in this series:

• The Farming Profitability Review and the Active Farmer - Burges Salmon

• The Farming Profitability Review and Farm Tenancies - Burges Salmon