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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the Department's press release entitled New support to help farmers thrive for generations, published on 16 July 2026, what assessment was made of the impact of collaborative purchasing arrangements on farm input costs before announcing this policy.

Defra has considered a range of anticipated benefits of the Farmer Collaboration Fund. The impact of collaborative purchasing arrangements on input costs was not included in that assessment because there was insufficient evidence about likely uptake and effects of that uptake. We will build further evidence about benefits through our monitoring and evaluation process.