Editor’s View: Do retailers still care about farm assurance?
© AdobeStock There is a certain type of child who picks up their football and takes it home rather than suffer the indignity of losing the game.
The trouble for these fragile youngsters is the teasing from their friends is often worse than suffering a temporary sporting setback.
So it is tempting this week to make fun of supermarket lobbyists at the British Retail Consortium (BRC), a body that represents members with a combined £350bn of sales annually but that doesn’t have time to help with the UK Farm Assurance Review.
See also: Retail body snubs farm assurance monitoring review
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In the latest update into the ongoing work by many organisations to implement the recommendations of the review – first published in January 2025 – it was revealed that the poor old supermarket lobbyists are simply too busy to participate.
Can that be the case?
Or are they taking their football home because they’re still in a grump that they didn’t succeed in ramming the infamous Greener Farms Commitment module into Red Tractor – the act that lit the powder keg of farmer dissatisfaction with assurance two years ago.
I will leave you to make your minds up on that one, but it’s interesting to note they’re being shown up by Lidl, M&S and Morrisons, which are all participating in an individual capacity. Credit to them.
But then it occurred to me that perhaps some farmers will regard it as a positive outcome – the rest of the industry is being left to mould assurance schemes so that they are more than just a farmer-funded tool to protect retailer reputations.
Less a ball absent from the pitch, perhaps, than a player with a particularly aggressive studs-up tackle that others dread competing against.
So where do we go from here? I think it’s both an opportunity and a threat. The review has given rise to a lot of work that could yet do a lot of good.
And a lack of representation from those who are currently the biggest beneficiaries means we could do things differently. And just because they’re not part of this initiative doesn’t mean the retailers have stopped engaging.
There’s plenty they’re doing with supplier groups and other modes of action that is positive and should be welcomed.
After all, farmer engagement with their customers is always good, providing the outcome is mutually beneficial rather than one side just throwing their weight around.
The threat from their lack of engagement is that it’s shutting down one opportunity to see the value of what we are doing.
We have to be doing our bit to help them succeed, just as they must do the same for producers. And we need them as allies and advocates for us on the major issues of the day like inheritance tax (IHT).
See also: NFU leader slates interest charges on IHT
The recent intervention on that topic by the chief executive of M&S really meant something. When the leaders of these mega-businesses speak, politicians listen.
And you only have to look at this week’s lead news story on IHT to see the folly of politicians not listening to the sector.
Not only are these changes nonsensical, but the implementation of them also looks set to be disastrous. The ball remains in the Treasury’s court.