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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 recei ....
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 ....
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, ....