British farmers must be helped to sell their produce to countries in Asia and America as part of the Government’s new push to increase exports, the farming industry’s union leader said.
National Farmers’ Union president Meurig Raymond welcomed the announcement earlier this month that Defra’s Great British Food Unit was now open for business; “What I want to see now is more export markets being made available to British farmers to sell to countries such as China, Japan, the USA and Saudi Arabia.”
The Government’s commitment to driving exports through a centralised team of experts from across Defra could hardly be more timely, Mr Raymond said. Liz Truss said the idea of the food unit was to “turbo-charge” UK food exports, a drive which she said might create an extra 5,000 jobs.
Long-term, the new unit is intended to help the UK match France and Germany, which both currently export food and drink products which, in total, are worth more than double that of the UK’s exports.