25,000 farmers set to quit as crisis deepens

14 October 1998

25,000 farmers set to quit as crisis deepens

By FWi staff

MORE than 25,000 farmers are expected to quit the industry as the crisis in agriculture deepens, a major high street bank claimed yesterday.

Brian Montgomery, head of agriculture at NatWest Bank, said the combination of high borrowings and falling incomes was a recipe for a mass exodus out of the industry.

Farm borrowings have already risen by about 10% this year to £6.4bn. Farmers income have slumped in real terms to their lowest since the 1930s.

Mr Montgomery forecast that more than 25,000 farmers ó up to 15% of full-time producers ó would be forced out of the industry.

“Between10 and 15% of full-time farmers will go out of the business one way or the other over the next five years,” Mr Montgomery told The Daily Telegraph.

The newspaper devotes two pages to the farming crisis. It details the slump across the industry and recounts the boom years enjoyed by cereal farmers in the early 1990s.