Coronavirus presents unprecedented challenges to the businesses we rely on to provide essential services which keep people safe—including food supply, water and waste.
Many businesses in these sectors have benefited from Government schemes to support all businesses, including the coronavirus job retention scheme, coronavirus business interruption loan scheme, and the small business grant scheme and support for the self-employed.
Beyond this, the Government have taken specific action to support the food, farming, water and waste sectors in the delivery of critical services.
Fisheries
The fishing sector has seen considerable impacts because of the closure of restaurants both here and in Europe and severe market disruption. Last week we announced a new £10 million support scheme to help the catching and aquaculture sector in England and boost local supply chains. Vessel owners and aquaculture businesses will receive payments to help cover their fixed costs. On Monday we began to contact eligible vessel owners. The MMO has published the details of the scheme on gov.uk.
Dairy
In particular, the dairy sector has felt a significant impact as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Between 5% and 10% of total milk production goes to the food service trade and there is therefore a small proportion of milk production that currently has no home. The vast majority of Britain's 10,000 dairy farmers continue to supply their contracts at the usual price and larger processors have been largely unaffected by the market disruption because of their scale and diversified nature. In order to support the affected farmers, on Friday we announced that we will set aside some elements of competition law to make it easier for processors to come together and voluntarily work out how to ease production down in order to create the space in the market for that milk that currently has no home and to support a recovery in the spot price. We have asked the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, which supports the interests of dairy farmers and the wider farming industry, and Dairy UK, which represents the processors, to co-ordinate a proposal and discussions are already under way.
Livestock
There has been a drop in demand in various cuts, for example steaks, leading to carcass balance problems in the beef, poultry meat and pig meat sectors. We have encouraged supermarkets to put steaks on promotion and, while the price of beef cattle has reduced in recent weeks, retailers are also reporting an increase in meat sales. Although the price of beef cattle, poultry and pigs has dropped, it still remains higher than in previous years. Quite a lot of beef, poultry meat and pig meat has gone into storage so we continue to monitor this market closely.