“The Farm Profitability Review shows that the problem is no longer understanding what needs to change, but whether government is willing to deliver it. Farming and the countryside are central to the UK economy but unlocking that potential will require a fundamental reset in how government works with the countryside.”
The Countryside Alliance welcomes the ambition and scope of the Farm Profitability Review, particularly its recognition that farming, food and land management are significantly undervalued within our current economic and policy frameworks. Baroness Batters is right to say that without profitable farming, wider ambitions around food security, environmental recovery and rural resilience cannot be met.
The Review makes clear that delivery now rests with government. The challenge is no longer diagnosis but implementation and that requires Whitehall to fundamentally reset how it engages with the countryside. As we set out in our recent paper on reconnecting the countryside with government, rural policy failures are due not to a lack of ideas or engagement but to a deep disconnect between central government and rural communities.
The Farm Profitability Review reinforces this conclusion and its findings highlight:
This is not a failure of farmers to adapt, but a failure of the government to create the conditions in which adaptation and growth are possible.
The Countryside Alliance supports the Review's assertion that farming and food production must be seen as integral to the UK economy. Farming underpins domestic food security, energy and natural resource resilience, environmental delivery, tourism and recreation and economic vitality across much of the country.
When farming, processing, allied industries, tourism, green energy and natural capital are properly accounted for, the countryside emerges as a significant contributor to national prosperity. Yet recognising this value is insufficient without action. Policy decisions on planning, procurement, regulation, taxation and infrastructure must actively support productive rural businesses rather than undermining them.
We welcome the Review's recommendations to reassess how agricultural and rural productivity is measured by the ONS by including primary and secondary processing in GDP and accelerating adoption of natural capital metrics.
What is not measured is not valued and poor measurement leads directly to poor policy. However, improved metrics must translate into changed decision-making, not simply generating new data. Government must ensure better measurement delivers better outcomes for farmers and rural communities.
While the Review rightly focuses on farm profitability, farming exists within a wider countryside economy. In many rural areas, resilience depends on agriculture, rural tourism and hospitality, sporting and recreational activity, local services and small enterprises working together.
Government policy must therefore support the countryside as a connected economic system. Improving farm profitability on paper while hollowing out the communities and services that make farming viable in practice will not succeed.
The Farm Profitability Review presents government with a clear choice. Either farming and the countryside are treated as central to economic strategy, with policy designed in partnership and delivered across Whitehall, or the Review joins other well-intentioned documents that fail at implementation.
Delivering on this potential requires government to take responsibility for implementation and fundamentally reset how it works with, values and supports the countryside. Without this, even the strongest recommendations risk remaining words on paper.
Farming and the countryside are not peripheral to the UK's future prosperity, they are central to it. The question is whether government will act accordingly.