To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs to outline what steps he is taking to ease production costs for agri-food business owners.

Northern Ireland producers are facing unprecedented rises in input costs. We continue to monitor the impacts and have a range of actions in place to mitigate these impacts on primary production businesses.

The ‘Rising Cost Taskforce’ (led by College of Agriculture Food and Rural Enterprise with cross industry representation) continues to ensure the consistency of advisory messages and provides practical help and support. It is currently surveying farm businesses and the information gathered will inform targeted messaging over the winter months. Further practical on-farm information sessions to consider the continuing increasing input costs will be delivered by my officials over the winter months. The key concerns are energy costs, fertiliser cost and availability and expected increase in compound feed costs.

I recognise that there continues to be volatility in the market and the overall situation remains difficult given the scale of the input cost rises. From 01

September 2022 I issued full Direct Payments of £286.9million to 97% of eligible applicants. This was 6 weeks earlier than previous years and should help assist our local agri-industry with cash flow. I have also delivered a pig sector support scheme to address some of the challenges affecting pig producers, with payments of over £1.2m issued to approximately 130 producers.

My Officials have significant ongoing engagement with industry stakeholders, Defra, other devolved administrations and the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine (ROI) on those cross-cutting issues relating to reducing the impacts of volatility in price and supply of key industry inputs. I continue to engage regularly with UK Government at a senior level and drive home the importance of national collaboration on dealing with the impacts of the Ukraine crisis on our agri-food industry and future food security. I have written and met with the former Secretary of State, Rt Hon George Eustice on a number of occasions to reiterate my concerns regarding the unprecedented increases in input costs and the need for a range of measures, including financial assistance for UK farmers to support them through the crisis. I will be restating those concerns to the new Secretary of State for DEFRA, Ranil Jayawardena MP.

DAERA produces a weekly Food Observatory Report and a supporting Food Supply Impact Assessment to continuously assess the health of the food supply system for Northern Ireland. An escalation policy, to raise issues of concern through TEO, is in place so that we are prepared for both future crisis and long term sustainability issues associated with our food supplies. A cross departmental food forum supports this work.