Food supply on a knife-edge - NFU

Food supply and security is balanced on a knife edge, farmers' leader Peter Kendall warns in his new year's message.

Speaking on the eve of the centenary year of the National Farmers' Union, he said that 2008 would be a year when British farming would become even more important to the country's prosperity.

"The world's food supply is balanced on a knife edge between sufficiency and shortage," said Mr Kendall. Despite a record global harvest of

2.1 billion tonnes of cereals, food stocks have fallen to the lowest level in a quarter of a century - just 65 days' supply.

"If you couple that with the impact of climate change on harvests around the world, and a remorseless increase in demand, you have a situation in which supplies are less secure, and market prices more volatile, than probably ever before," said Mr Kendall, who was elected NFU president two years ago.

"No country can afford to neglect the productivity of its own farming sector against that daunting background; least of all a country like the UK, which has allowed its self-sufficiency in indigenous foods to fall by 15pc in the last 10 years," he added.

Farmers do not want government intervention in markets, he said. "Britain's farmers and growers are more than capable of rising to the challenge of increasing their productivity, given fair markets and proportionate regulation," said cereal grower Mr Kendall, who farms at Ashwell, near Biggleswade.