The UK’s surging farming revenues cannot mask the wider problems facing the sector, industry leaders have warned.
Annual figures published last week by Defra revealed a 20.5% (or £1.4bn) increase in the farming sector’s total income in 2025, to a record £8.4bn.
Now-former farming minister Angela Eagle hailed the figures as a “welcome sign for the sector”, following several years of dwindling returns.
Incomes surged on the back of higher commodity prices in beef and dairy, which led to a substantial rise in the value of outputs.
In beef, historically high deadweight prices, coupled with strong consumer demand and a slump in production volumes drove a 22.8% jump in the value of the sector’s output to £945m.
Meanwhile, the dairy sector saw output values jump by 12% to £755m – driven by high farmgate prices, which drove higher production in spring and summer 2025, though prices have since collapsed.
But despite the minister’s optimism, industry leaders have cautioned underlying profitabiltiy concerns facing the sector remain. British Meat Processors Association CEO John Powell highlighted the need for planning reform, the completion of the SPS deal with the EU, and support for British produce.
“It has to speed up and come in as quickly as possible because the inability of the industry to invest in new facilities for animals is making it difficult to invest,” he said. “We know there’s money there, we know the industry wants to invest, but going to the planning permission takes an eternity.
“We need more transparency around what people are eating to make sure we are supporting British, keeping our food security at a high level […] as well as opening up those new markets,” he added. “We need to export; we need to import because of carcass balance.”
Although total livestock output increased, total crop output continued to decline; sinking £0.4bn (–3.1%) to £11.4bn. This was largely due to falling barley (–16.8%), sugar beet (–21.8%) and potato (–5.4%) values.
Moreover, Defra attributed part of the overall rise to 2025’s relatively stable input prices, but these have soared since the start of the Iran conflict in February.
Glebe Farms co-founder and MD Philip Rayner warned high costs and low prices were making cereal farming economically unsustainable, with headline prices “not covering the cost of production from increased fertilisers, staff and machinery”.
With no area-based support payments in the UK, he also argued farmers would have to “max out Sustainable Farming Incentive schemes to get [financial] certainty”.
Rayner added: “The good news? There will be more environmental-based farming, but farms are disappearing daily and imports will increase from where it is cheapest and regulation is lowest.”
Andrew Williamson, vice-chair of the National Farmers’ Union’s Combinable Crops Board, added the government had to resolve questions around the SFI, which was criticised by the NFU this month. He has also called on the government to intervene on fertiliser prices.
“If fertiliser goes above a certain value, then we’re asking the government to step in and subsidise that increased value to a degree, up to a certain level per farm, exactly the same as they’ve proposed in the EU and other countries, like Australia and the US, which are also supporting farmers,” Williamson continued.
He added: “We’re just looking to make sure we get some support from our government and actually get them to turn the phrase ‘food security is national security’ into real action so we can continue to produce affordable, safe, sustainable food for our consumers on this in the UK.”
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