The UK agri food system will be one of the sectors most seriously affected by Brexit. Trade both within and beyond the European Union is extremely important to the industry and agricultural producers are also heavily dependent upon seasonal migrant labour. At the moment farming is both highly regulated and subsidised under the Common Agricultural Policy. For these reasons our exit from the EU will shake up the whole system, and the effects will reach far beyond farming. How agricultural policy is formulated in the wake of such enormous change has implications for the livelihoods of large numbers of people and, more widely, for the whole of the UK, including the shopper in their local supermarket. 

This project aims to bring together information across a wide range of different areas: imports, exports, supply, demand, prices, to consider the potential implications. The researchers will investigate the interactions of these factors and the potential consequences of different policy scenarios. They aim to find out what the potential real effects could be for farming families: how resilient will their incomes be, how will their production decision making be affected, and what are the implications for UK agri-trade across the industry as a whole, for rural communities and for the consumer?