Nigel Farage\u2019s farming adviser has called for a doubling of wheat prices by using trade policy, which critics have said would hike food costs during a cost-of-living crisis.<\/p>\n
Arable farmer and campaigner Clive Bailye has been appointed as a farming and land use adviser for Reform UK. Bailye owns the website The Farming Forum, a social network for farmers, and helped organise the large-scale protests <\/a>against the Labour government\u2019s introduction of inheritance tax for farmed land.<\/p>\n Bailye said he has been working with James Orr, Reform\u2019s policy chief, to draft the party\u2019s farming policy for its next general election manifesto. He posted on his forum that he had \u201csignificant influence and input\u201d on Reform\u2019s agricultural policy and is \u201cVERY impressed by what I have seen in draft\u201d.<\/p>\n One policy he has suggested is using trade policy to hike the amount farmers are paid for wheat. He wrote: \u201cAll that\u2019s required is political will to understand and fix british agriculture. Trade policy<\/a> could double wheat price over night, job done! It\u2019s really not hard.\u201d<\/p>\n Food prices for consumers have soared in recent years after inflation caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine. UK food prices rose by a total of 38.6% between November 2020 and November 2025. This is likely to be exacerbated <\/a>by the war in Iran, which is hiking fertiliser costs.<\/p>\n Campaigner and author Guy Shrubsole said: \u201cI find it pretty extraordinary that Reform\u2019s farming adviser wants to double the price of wheat \u2013 and hence bread \u2013 in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, and as Trump\u2019s war on Iran is causing fertiliser prices to spike.<\/p>\n \u201cCouple this with Reform\u2019s other policies \u2013 such as importing chlorinated chicken from America, slashing nature protections, and covering the landscape with fracking wells \u2013 and it\u2019s pretty clear that Nigel Farage would be a disaster for the countryside, and the country as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n Reform UK has been courting the rural vote, with Farage a regular presence at farming protests. The Labour party diminished its support <\/a>in the countryside after introducing inheritance tax for farmers, cutting farming subsidies<\/a> and hiking tax on double cab pick-ups. Farmers are feeling the squeeze, with a third failing<\/a> to make a profit at all in 2024.<\/p>\n Farage had been seeking nature policy advice from rewilding campaigner Ben Goldsmith<\/a>, but the party publicly distanced itself <\/a>from him after receiving backlash from farmers and landowners who disagree with Goldsmith\u2019s bid to release locally extinct animals back into the countryside.<\/p>\n Bailye, who owns a 750-acre arable farm<\/a> in Staffordshire, said farmers were writing Reform\u2019s rural policy. He said he had seen a \u201cdraft agricultural manifesto\u201d and added: \u201c[The] direction is by farmers \u2013 economists and lawyers just determine what\u2019s possible or not and ensure the promises are deliverable.\u201d In 2025 he organised a \u201cmilling wheat strike\u201d<\/a> to withhold flour from stores unless the tax rises were dropped.<\/p>\n The Liberal Democrats\u2019 environment spokesperson, Tim Farron MP, said: \u201cWhile Reform chases headlines, our livestock farmers would see their feed costs skyrocket and our exporters would face retaliatory tariffs that would shut British lamb and beef out of the global market.<\/p>\n \u201cFarage\u2019s party\u2019s ridiculous suggestion shows they don\u2019t understand farmers or farming at all and that they\u2019d leave Brits with even higher food prices.\u201d<\/p>\n