Supermarket Morrisons has added a ‘buy British’ tab to their online shop at morrisons.com, enabling shoppers to buy British produce easily.
The NFU supports this decision, which comes after years of campaigns urging UK supermarkets to back British farming. MP Dr Luke Evans wrote an open letter, requesting UK supermarkets to add a ‘British’ filter to their online shops. This follows the NFU’s 2016 online labelling campaign which aims to make it easier for shoppers to identify British food when shopping online. A survey of UK adults found that 86% of them want to buy more British food.
Other supermarkets do not have this level of functionality on their website as yet. Sainsbury’s and Waitrose have made some efforts towards this, as they do have sections for British seasonal produce on their fruit and vegetable pages. Sainsbury’s also has a button that enables shoppers to select British meat and fish, and Ocado provides a ‘Best of British’ page. These are some positive steps that can help shoppers and farmers alike.
Morrisons has also supported British farming by launching a support package that underwrites 100% of the cost of growing crops. Morrisons has provided this support package to a collection of potato and carrot farmers as of August 2023. If this scheme proves successful, they hope to roll it out to more farms in 2024. This package offers farmers financial security by mitigating the risks of crop growing, such as weather fluctuations and costs of land and fertilisers.
Here at ESUS Agri, we work with farmers across the West Country, providing agricultural consultancy and sustainable solutions. If you need some assistance with applying for government funding schemes, applying regenerative farming techniques, maximising profits, and more, get in touch with us.
