Only one in four peo­ple said that they were wor­ried that leav­ing the Euro­pean Union might force farm­ers out of busi­ness, where­as 61% were wor­ried about ris­ing food prices and one in three about what EU foods will be avail­able post Brex­it. The major­i­ty of shop­pers also admit they don’t always buy British even when it is available.

LEAF (Link­ing Envi­ron­ment And Farm­ing) sur­veyed shop­pers about their Brex­it fears, ahead of this year’s Open Farm Sun­day on 11^th June. The foods that con­sumers were most wor­ried would be hard­er to find post Brex­it were con­ti­nen­tal cheese (21%), soft fruits such as rasp­ber­ries and straw­ber­ries (18%), toma­toes and pep­pers (15%) and choco­late (14%).

The sus­tain­able farm­ing char­i­ty, LEAF, also polled farm­ers about their con­cerns**. Near­ly six in ten farm­ers (59%) claim that with­out the sup­port of con­sumers the British farm­ing sec­tor would find it hard to com­pete with food pro­duced in oth­er nations post Brex­it, and an over­whelm­ing 85% of farm­ers believe the pub­lic need a bet­ter under­stand­ing of British agriculture. 

The results revealed a lack of under­stand­ing about the over­all val­ue of farm­ing. UK agri­cul­ture con­tributes near­ly £47bn to the econ­o­my — more than £7 for every £1 invest­ed*** — yet only 10% of con­sumers recog­nised this sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion. This includes mon­ey earned through coun­try­side recre­ation, with farm­ers man­ag­ing more than 70% of the country’s land­scape. In addi­tion, those sur­veyed believe farm­ers grow just 37% of the food we eat in Britain, when in fact it is actu­al­ly 61%. 

Four in ten farm­ers believe peo­ple should be will­ing to pay more for British foods, how­ev­er near­ly one in five con­sumers (17%) believe that British pro­duce should actu­al­ly be cheap­er than its for­eign coun­ter­parts. Just half of those ques­tioned said they always buy British meat when avail­able, with few­er always buy­ing British cheese (42%), fresh veg­eta­bles and sal­ad (35%) or fresh fruit (28%). Even those will­ing to pay more were only will­ing to spend an extra 11 per­cent on aver­age for British foods. 

Com­ment­ing on the find­ings, LEAF Chief Exec­u­tive, Car­o­line Drum­mond said: ​“It’s essen­tial that as we work towards leav­ing the Euro­pean Union, the pub­lic under­stand and val­ue what farm­ers do for us all. Farm­ers play a vital role – not just in pro­duc­ing the food we eat and car­ing for the coun­try­side but they also con­tribute to so many aspects of all our dai­ly lives – from med­i­cines and cos­met­ics, to fuel and even what we wear, the cars we dri­ve and the build­ings we live and work in. LEAF Open Farm Sun­day is the per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak with farm­ers and hear at first-hand about what hap­pens beyond the farm gate – and why they need our support.” 

For farm­ers, their biggest con­cerns are pay­ments from gov­ern­ment decreas­ing (76%), busi­ness costs increas­ing (60%) and an increase in imports from non-EU nations (51%). Less than one in five (18%) farm­ers believe Brex­it will be good for British farm­ing, with near­ly half (47%) feel­ing they will be worse off after­wards. Three quar­ters of farm­ers (78%) feel they them­selves should be doing more to pro­mote the farm­ing indus­try to the pub­lic. LEAF Open Farm Sun­day on 11^th June will see hun­dreds of them doing just that by open­ing their gates so peo­ple can see mod­ern farm­ing at first hand.

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