The NFU has hit back at a recent Telegraph article which claimed that cheap foreign food imports would benefit British food security.
The union said the article, published on 27 March by writer Matthew Lesh, showed a need for an "urgent lesson in how the UK’s food supply chains work".
In the article, entitled 'Cheap food is more important than protecting failing farmers', Mr Lesh suggested that farmers’ calls for fairness in the supply chain were unjust, describing claims that they were being undercut by lower quality produce from abroad as 'absurd'.
The article suggested that closed-minded attitudes to international trade would hurt British consumers and harm food security.
The NFU has written to The Telegraph, explaining 'the reality' of the food supply chain and the reasoning behind its asks for the formation of a core standards commission.
This would ensure British farmers and growers are competing on a level playing field, the union said.
In the letter, NFU President Tom Bradshaw said: "I am not sure where columnist Mr Lesh buys his weekly shop, but here in the UK we already have some of the cheapest food in the world relative to income.
"Previous generations spent over a third of their income on food, we now only spend around 11%.
"Retail price increases rarely make their way back to farmers and growers which is why we have been beating the drum for fairness in the supply chain for many years."
Mr Lesh also suggested that British farmers weren't being undercut by lower standard imports, however, there are currently no standards in place to safeguard farming business from imports that would be illegal to produce in the UK.
That is why, alongside the WWF, the NFU has written to the three main political parties in England to call for the formation of a core standards commission.
It comes as the government continues to open up the UK market to agri-food imports from across the world.
Recently, the UK’s membership of the CPTPP trade deal cleared its final hurdle before being ratified, and the government launched trade talks with Turkey.
But Mr Bradshaw said in his letter: "With war and climate change wreaking havoc on food production across the world, does Mr Lesh really believe we can feed our nation, and a growing global population, by relying on imports?
"British farmers are not failing. They produce food for the nation to some of the highest standards in the world and have an ambition to produce more.
"But farms need to make a profit to invest in their businesses to continue producing food we need the right regulatory framework to do that.
"This must be a priority for government because our food security depends on it."
