jewish worshippers converge on the western well for the passover blessing injerusalem. a heavy security presence is being carried out as officials fear violence could breakout. a short distance away, hundreds of palestinians have barricaded themselves inside the al—aqsa mosque injerusalem. tensions remain high, as israeli police stopped palestinian men from entering the compound. you're watching bbc news. now it's time for hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. today, i'm in wiltshire, southern england — farming country — where the serene rural views belie deepening economic anxiety. �*cos right now, agriculture is under enormous pressure. spiralling costs, shortages

of labour and a demand that farmers produce more at less cost to the environment. my guest today is minette batters. she farms right here. she's also president of the national farmers�* union. as a society, are we asking our farmers for the impossible? minette batters, welcome to hardtalk. thank you for having me. it's a great pleasure to be on yourfarm. and the sun is shining and, in some ways, you would think the sun would be shining on farmers. food prices are spiralling higher. you would think that would be good news for farmers.

is it? it's — it's quite extraordinary. i don't think, in my lifetime, i've ever faced into anything like the cost inflation that we're facing with our inputs now. so, we're seeing triple digit inflation on — on fertiliser, we've seen diesel costs up by 57%, feed costs up by nearly 60%. these are huge price pressures and, of course... you have chosen to alight upon the price pressures, i chose to start by talking about the prices you are receiving because we know that consumers are struggling to meet the prices of the basic foodstuffs that they buy in the supermarket, which makes me think surely, the farmers, at least, are getting the bonus of greater income? that isn't how it works, so i'm trying to just describe the huge inflation that we're feeling and then, of course, you've

got to pass that on. so, if your costs are up massively on where they were in 2019, so price per therm of gas in normal time effectively 50p a therm. we're now seeing, still, having — the price of gas having come down, we're still seeing it over 150% higher. so, of course, all of these costs with production, whether that be feed costs, energy costs, fuel costs, someone has got to pay for that. now, there's a limit to what consumers can afford to pay and then, you've got the whole supply chain — you've got the retailer, the packer — so it's about getting a fair return, effectively, for farmers and growers to keep them producing the food that we want. the economist magazine just a couple of months ago looked at the income of cereal farmers across the country and they reckoned that their income had risen more than 68% in the last year. now, we sometimes get a little cynical about farmers. they plead poverty and yet, you dig away at their actual accounts and they're doing rather well. isn't that the case for at least some farmers even now?

you've got a story of two halves. so, for arable farmers, yes, they probably had a once—in—30—year harvest. don't forget the inputs costs, you know? fertiliser, they would've, the previous year, been paying effectively £200 a ton and they were paying 1,000 pounds a ton for nitrogen fertiliser, so they were facing huge input costs. but then, of course, you've got your poultry farmers, you've got your livestock, your dairy farmers who've to pay a much higher price for that feed because the global commodity price, as you say, skyrocketed, all driven by russia invading ukraine. yeah. when it comes to the biggest obstacles to farmers today — you've talked about the shocks of covid, of the ukraine war, the various different disruptions and supply chain problems, isn't the truth that the biggest problem of all with the vote to leave the european union —

and we reckon that roughly half of farmers actually did vote for brexit — so, in a sense, farmers looking at their problems today, many of them only have themselves to blame? brexit — i don't think farmers were any different to anybody else. you know, families across the country were divided, farmers were divided. i actually felt that we should remain and i took a public position on it. many didn't, of course, so they were divided on whether they wanted to remain in the eu or whether they wanted to leave. ultimately, we chose to leave and i think, you know, i personally am enormously grateful that we're in a democratic society and we voted to leave and we've left. did the government lie to farmers about what the impact of brexit would be? well, there was one sheet of all, wasn't there? and there were three straplines on that sheet of a4 — "the easiest trade deal in history.

"more money because we won't be investing "it in europe. "and a bonfire of regulation". well, actually none of those have come true. and when it comes to the practical impact of brexit upon farms like yours, labour is a huge need for agricultural producers. can your members, the farmers across the united kingdom, can they get the seasonal workers they need, that they used to get very easily from the european union? when we were in europe, we were the preferred country for seasonal workers to come to. we were ahead of germany, we were ahead of everybody else. people wanted to come here. that's all gone now. so we are bringing people in from very, very challenging parts of the world. there's a lot of cost attached to coming here and it is a very, very different landscape for growers now and seasonal workers. we've had to battle really hard with the home office. we started with a figure, five years ago, of 10,000. that's now 45,000. it still has to be agreed on an annual basis.

we're saying we've got to have a five—year rolling programme. the dexterity of this human hand is absolutely essential. we haven't got a robot yet that can pick at anywhere near the pace that a human hand, or cut or do anything else. last year, it was claimed by the nfu that tens of millions of pounds worth of crops were left in the ground, were simply wasted because there wasn't the workforce to harvest them. you presumably tell government ministers that. have they responded? i tell them that regularly. look, we've gone from 10,000 to 115,000 with a potential uplift... you mean the visas offered to seasonal workers coming in specifically to do farm work? absolutely. but we don't simply have enough people who are unemployed here to do the job, so this is holding our whole economy back. it's huge for agriculture but for the whole supply chain as well. and when you hear, as i hear, of farmworkers from countries

like the philippines, a whole bunch of other countries, who come here and are held in a sort of debt bondage because those who bring them here demand they pay for the visas, for the transportation and given the sums they are earning on the farms, they remain in debt for months, if not years. what responsibility do you and your members take for these people who come here and live in such debt? well, for the seasonal workers scheme, they — last year and the previous year, the payment rate was set above our own national living wage, so actually, you had people coming here that were being paid more than the top of our national living wage. this year, it is an equilibrium across both. so, it's really important — we are a highly regulated sector, it's really important people are well paid, their living, their accommodation is on—site, it's absolutely vital that that is first—class and that everybody is well looked after. as i say, we didn't get the badge in the european union

of being the most preferred country for no reason at all. people wanted to come here. in terms of another eu issue, and that is trade deals, which the british government insisted would offer — brexit would offer amazing opportunities to sign new, better trade deals with countries around the world. they've alighted upon australia, new zealand as early examples. you have suggested that the deals actually done represent, frankly, a betrayal of british farmers. why do you say that? i've worked with three different prime ministers in the last 12 months and they've all had very different priorities. i feel it was an absolute catastrophe, if i'm honest, to give australia and new zealand total liberalised deals. in 15 years, there will be no checks and balances. if anything goes wrong, there will be nothing that we can do about it. now, michael gove, george eustace and many others had maintained these sensitive

sectors and it was decided by liz truss at the time that we would fully liberalise. australia was liberalised and we would, too. there'll be nothing that we can do if things go wrong here. crosstalk. what a negative view of what mark spencer, the farming minister, described as a massive opportunity forfarmers to enjoy a new dawn, allowing them to break into markets in asia. he said, "with inbuilt safeguards to ensure that "farmers are still protected". was he simply not telling the truth? so, if he's talking recently, he's talking about the trans—pacific deal, which is the cptpp deal. now, this is what i mean about different prime ministers. you had borisjohnson, you had liz truss. now, the cptpp, liz truss wanted to start negotiations at 100,000 tons on beef. actually, what they've done with this deal, the trans—pacific one,

is to negotiate a deal of 13,000 tons on beef. you can see that that is a very, very different approach. i'm really pleased that the prime minister has listened — rishi sunak has listened. you've got a different approach to trade but don't forget the damage that was done previously, and two of the most formidable countries as far as agriculture goes in the cptpp are australia and new zealand. and what has happened is that, you know, those countries want access to our market for agricultural goods. we want access on services, so we've ended up sacrificing agriculture for services. there's a different approach now, a different mandate, and i think kemi badenoch and rishi sunak, you know, they get it, but a lot of damage has been done. see, it'sjust i'm thinking you've had, what?, five years in thisjob. you're the first woman president of the national farmers�* union. you have a powerful voice. and yet, i'm sort of wondering what you've achieved. if one looks at the way agriculture and farming issues have an extraordinarily prominent position in countries not so very far from here, like france —

like the netherlands, where a farmers�* movement political party has just scored an outstanding victory in local elections. farming and farmers in this country simply don't carry that kind of clout. you're their union boss, so, where are you going wrong? i think you're wrong. we led a campaign that brought all chefs, all farming organisations, all environmental ngos and we got a million people in under a month signing a petition, saying that our food standards here mattered on animal welfare and environmental protection and they didn't want to see them sacrificed in trade deals. so, people in this country do care. i think politically, they tend to think, "0h, farming doesn't matter. "it's a backwater." why? i think a long time in the eu, we took food for granted. we had trade flows that went backwards and forwards. you can buy food, whatever you want, whenever you want, 21w, so i think we have taken our food for granted. and isn't it partly

because you've ceded so much power in terms of the food supply chain to the retailers and the processors? if you look at the price of a loaf of bread, for example, as i understand it, less than 1% of the value of that bread actually goes to of that bread actually goes to the farmer who grows the wheat. the farmer who grows the wheat. hmm—mm. hmm—mm. that is not true in some other that is not true in some other countries, and farmers, countries, and farmers, in a sense, have in a sense, have allowed that to happen? allowed that to happen? you're right. you're right.