THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON FARMING James Harvey

THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON THE FARMING INDUSTRY IN THE UK

Following the outbreak of coronavirus in March 2020 there were heavy regulations imposed on firms, concerning the work environment and social distancing. The farming industry’s profits are made by selling their goods domestically and abroad, through supermarkets and wholesalers. However, the virus is causing consumers to buy domestically produced goods as a result of falling imports – impart due to Brexit. For farmers though 90% of the UK’s sheep meat exports are into the EU, this is causing farmers to have gluts of supply, they are unable to sell their meat. As farmers are starting to shift their sales to domestic markets the competitivity increases leading to a decrease in price of raw meat in the UK.

Not only are profits waning for farmers, but the furlough scheme has led to many farm workers being unavailable to work. Farmers are classed as self-employed key workers under the government schemes, consequently they were allowed a subsidy of 80% of their monthly profits up to a cap of £2,500.

The pandemic has also caused greater dependence on famers as travel and imports have been halted, but the industry cannot afford the extra cost to ensure compliance to red tape regulations.

However, the effect on agriculture has been minimal compared to other industries, some farms have had to close but many are still fully operational and have only seen proportionally small dips in revenue. Whereas other industries such as hospitality and travel have seen unprecedented declines in revenue to the point of bankruptcy in extreme cases.

Farmers have been negatively affected by covid but not to the extent that many believe the main cause of declines in production from late 2019 to 2020 was the record amount of rainfall which postponed planting for many farmers and led to a fall in yield.