THE current disappointing trade in ewe lambs for breeding is down to uncertainty about the future, says one leading farmer.

Hans Pörksen, a former NFU county chairman who farms at Cambo, said the one thing the industry needed when it came to planning food production was a clearly-marked route.

“But there is unbelieveable uncertainty at the moment,” he said, “and the ewe lambs are a good example of that - in some cases they have been making less than wethers.

“The things is, by the time the lambs that are selling now are breeding, we haven’t a clue where we’ll be with subsidies.

“Business people always tell you the most important thing is to have some certainty, but at the moment we just don’t know where we are going to be in what is actually the very near future.”

Farmers were happy with the ewes they had at the minute, because they knew payments were only guaranteed for another couple of years.

Hans said: “The young females we have now, their main production will be after we have left the EU and we honestly don’t know what we will get for farming for food.

“There is so much talk about focusing on environmental payments that there is absolutely no emphasis on food and food production.”

In the mid 1960s, he said, on average 28 per cent of household income was spent on food. Today that figure was somewhere between eight and 12 per cent, “depending on whether you shopped at Aldi or Waitrose”.

The British public did not appreciate that the relative cheapness of food these past 40 years had been due to EU subsidies.

“The thing we have failed to do as an industry is get that message across to consumers,” he said.

“The only reason we can produce food at these prices – prices that are below the cost of production – is because of subsidies.”

He gave examples of politicians who believed farmers could carry on producing food in return for today’s prices, but that was impossible, he said.

“I’m way past retirement age, but I keep going because I love my job – I love breeding sheep.

“But selling animals at below the cost of production is not a lot of fun, trust me.”