Brexit Means Less British Food In Shops, Farmers Say

Brexit has led to a decline in crops and fewer home-grown products on the shelves of Britain's supermarkets, farming chiefs have warned.

- Adam Forrest

Farmers in Kent told a visiting group of MPs that it has become easier to import some fruits than harvest them because of strict limits on the number of seasonal workers from the EU.

Winterwood Farms, an agricultural giant based in the county, said its UK farms had been forced to leave 8 per cent of their fruit crop unharvested and would be planting less in future.

Stephen Taylor, managing director of Winterwood in Maidstone, said the government's advice to replace lost EU labour with British workers and robots showed how "out of touch" ministers had become.

"The flow of people coming from Europe to work for the summer has declined every year since Brexit, particularly the last two summers, and as a direct result we are now growing less and importing more," he said.