WITH the dust settling after the general election, have you ever stopped to wonder just how the result might affect the food you eat each day?

Almost every constituency contains farms and those that don’t are home to businesses involved in the production and distribution of the food farmers grow.

Farms across Somerset, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Bath and Wiltshire generate £988 million to the local economy on their own and that does not include the huge economic contribution of associated businesses and the wider supply chain.

The general election campaign saw widespread acknowledgement that food security is national security.

What we – and you – now need, alongside all of the other high priority policy areas like health, policing, education and social care, are practical policies that support a buoyant food and drink sector.

We want to see investment which allow our farms to deliver on our shared mission to produce more great British food and provide jobs and stimulate growth.

In a cost-of-living crisis, farming’s ability to provide affordable, climate friendly and high welfare food will be critical for families across the country, as well as underpinning the UK’s largest manufacturing sector, food and drink, worth more than £100 billion.

To enable us to achieve all this, we need the new government to prioritise setting an increased multi-year agriculture budget for the duration of the next Parliament.

This isn’t just ‘money for farmers’ - it’s funding that will give farmers the confidence to invest for the future and help make the government’s aims around sustainable food production, food security, the environment and net zero possible.

A secure and resilient supply of homegrown food can only be built on a fair and transparent supply chain that shares the risks involved in food production evenly and gives farmers confidence.

As the custodians of our great British countryside, we share the new government’s ambition to improve the environment and farmers are at the forefront of delivering new legislated environment targets.

We will need to continue to adapt and make improvements on farm to support plans to tackle water quality and to mitigate the devastating impact of flooding.

All of these actions will need proper investment and plans developed with those managing the land.

Working together with MPs to achieve these ambitions will be good for farmers, good for the country and good for you.

It will mean you get more of the British food you know and love.