Agriculture: Coronavirus

(asked on 7th March 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether his Department will provide additional support to farmers to help mitigate the effects of the covid-19 pandemic on that industry.


Answered by
Victoria Prentis Portrait
Victoria Prentis
Attorney General
This question was answered on 14th March 2022

We are aware of the challenges that the farming industry has faced because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and Defra has been working closely with the affected sectors.

To support businesses impacted by Covid-19, the Government made available financial support under a number of schemes during 2020. In April 2021, it additionally launched the Recovery Loan Scheme. This is intended to help give UK businesses ongoing access to finance as they recover from the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Where Covid has disrupted workforces, in the run up to Christmas Defra announced that visas would be made available up to 31 December 2021 for both poultry workers and HGV drivers transporting food. For the pig sector, we additionally launched a visa scheme allowing up to 800 pork butchers to work in the UK for six months from November 2021.

Where a sector has been more adversely affected we have taken further action. We have implemented Private Storage Aid and Slaughter Incentive Payment schemes to facilitate an increase in the throughput of pigs through abattoirs.

On 10 February I chaired a roundtable with representatives of the pig industry from across the UK. At the Roundtable I announced that we will be launching a UK-wide review of supply chain fairness in the pig sector. We will be engaging with industry on this with a consultation expected later this year. We want to elicit industry views on improvements to fairness and transparency that could be made to ensure a profitable and productive future.

I have also met with representatives of the agricultural banking sector to discuss the current situation in the pig sector. The banks confirmed that they are working closely with impacted pig farmers during this exceptionally challenging period and remain keen to be supportive.

We continue to meet with the industry and to monitor the situation closely.

Reticulating Splines