The Farming Profitability Review 2025, independently led by former NFU president Baroness Minette Batters, has been published. It examines farm profitability in England and has set out 57 recommendations for government and industry to strengthen the resilience and viability of farm businesses.  

Importantly, the review recognises agriculture’s potential to play a central role in the renewal of our economy. In her accompanying press release, the Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds acknowledges that farmers are “central to Britain’s food security, rural economy and countryside.” 

For me, one recommendation stands out 

You need only look back through some of my previous ‘Inside Track’ articles to know how strongly I feel about better collaboration in agriculture and food supply chains. One recommendation inevitably caught my attention as potentially transformative: the foundation of a new Food and Farming Partnership Board.  

Backed by government and championed by one of farming’s most respected voices, this board represents more than just another committee – it could be the catalyst that finally breaks down the barriers preventing investment and growth in UK agriculture.  

But can a single board, however well-intentioned, truly reshape an industry characterised by fragmented supply chains, competing interests and decades of entrenched commercial behaviours? 

Finally, collaboration from farm to fork? 

Agriculture’s impact extends far beyond simply producing food – it underpins huge swathes of our society, from rural economies to environmental sustainability, from public health to national food security. 

The Food and Farming Partnership Board has the potential to remove many of the practical barriers to investment and growth precisely because it brings together representatives from across this entire supply chain from farm to fork as well as policy makers and wider stakeholders.  

This means the Board has the power to tackle issues that have long frustrated progress, including making the planning system more responsive to rural business needs, addressing tax issues around capital investment and releasing finance for agricultural innovation. I see these as real, tangible barriers that have held back investment for years. Yet the board’s true power may not lie in merely solving practical problems, but in building something more fundamental: collaboration and trust across supply chains.  

This requires a profound shift in thinking. It means making decisions with an understanding of how they impact others in the supply chain. Because supply chains—not individual businesses – are the only way we’ll tackle the enormous challenges ahead: food security, climate change, carbon reduction, habitat restoration and water and air quality management. 

Here at home stronger supply chains could also help British farmers seize global opportunities. The dairy sector is a good example. In the UK, farmers are currently experiencing reduced milk prices after a period of strong returns. Yet globally dairy protein demand is growing with a projected CAGR of around 5-6% through to the early 2030s. Stable, collaborative supply chains could help British farmers who excel in dairy production to capitalise on global demand. 

Meeting the Scope 3 challenge 

The classic commercial model – where businesses look after themselves and pursue their own profitability – feels increasingly inadequate, even for enormous companies. They must continue to span supply chains and create common outcomes. 

For example, to meet Scope 3 emissions targets, food manufacturers and retailers need supplies of food with smaller carbon footprints. Yet they cannot simply mandate that suppliers cut emissions by 50% and expect it to happen. Meaningful change requires real partnership.  

Here forward-thinking companies are already demonstrating what collaboration looks like. Our own client Yara’s partnerships with PepsiCo and McCain’s for low-carbon potato production, and with maltsters supplying the whisky industry, show how significantly carbon footprints can be reduced through supply chain cooperation. 

The Board can shape policy – and possibility 

After 40 years of Brussels making trade decisions on our behalf, the Food and Farming Partnership Board could also provide the UK with renewed agility in agricultural trade and development. There’s a precedent here: New Zealand’s elimination of agricultural subsidies in the 1990s caused significant upheaval, but the industry emerged stronger because it forced engagement and problem-solving. 

The Board should focus on opening markets, facilitating trade missions and helping businesses navigate new opportunities. It could cut through Whitehall inertia—the “we’ve always done it this way ” mentality. 

In her press release, Emma Reynolds promises the new Board will put farmers and food producers at the heart of government decision making and drive growth, productivity and long-term profitability across the sector. To succeed the Board must be more than farmers talking to farmers, or retailers dictating terms to suppliers. It must be a genuine attempt to create dialogue across the full spectrum of food production and land management.  

If people engage with the right attitude, abandon old behaviours and embrace genuine collaboration it has the potential to create a transformative holistic view of our industry rather than competing silos. 

Because ultimately, we all need to eat, and the system that feeds us must work for everyone within it.