British Sugar indicative beet price of £25/t ‘not enough’

British Sugar’s “indicative” price of £25/t for 2022 beet does not go far enough to stem a continued flow of growers out of the sector, farm leaders have warned.

NFU Sugar chairman Michael Sly said: “Following the disastrous harvest many growers had in 2020, we have gone beyond the point of just putting out a price to get people to put [sugar beet] into the rotation.”

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“There now needs to be something to encourage people to stay in the industry… but at that level [£25/t], it does not work for the majority of the grower base.”

Mr Sly told the Farmers Weekly Podcast that the NFU had made its initial offer back in March, and it had taken four weeks for British Sugar to respond to that. NFU Sugar’s current offer is £27.75/t on a one- or two-year contract.

Failure to agree a price by the end of August would see the negotiations escalated to a higher level, and could even be referred to Defra for a decision.

‘Going public’

Mr Sly also accused British Sugar of “jumping the gun” by going public with a price mid-negotiation.

But British Sugar managing director Paul Kenward said it was clearly only an indicative price, to let growers know that £25/t is the minimum they will be paid in 2022.

“The past three years we’ve only been able to get a price out in September, so we were told repeatedly by growers that they would really like us to give them an indicative price at Cereals, which is what we always used to do,” he said.

“We are very clear this is not the price we have negotiated with the NFU. We are in negotiations in good faith and we can’t publish a price which is a contract offer until we get that agreement.

“We do understand that farmers had a very difficult year in 2020, but we can see better crops this year, and we think that’s an optimistic sign,” he added.

“We hope we can put a price together that convinces existing and new growers to carry on with this crop.”

Cambridgeshire grower Guy Wakeham said the price rise was a “step in the right direction”, but also accused British Sugar of “breaking ranks” by going public mid-negotiation.

He conceded that £25/t would “certainly help mitigate some of the losses and risks associated with growing beet”, but might not be enough to secure British Sugar with the beet it needs.