Farm campaign group Farmers For Action protest outside Coleraine Tesco
A farming campaign group has kicked off the first phase of a ‘farm gate prices’ movement with a protest outside the Coleraine branch of Tesco.
The Farmers For Action (FFA) Steering Committee staged the first of the national Phase 2 Inheritance Tax and farm gate price protests campaign in Northern Ireland at Coleraine on Thursday, January 29.
They say the protests will continue weekly on Thursday nights across Northern Ireland until March 1.
In a statement, Farmers for Action said Tesco had been “chosen as the example, where eleven of the largest UK retailers are sent a letter by email and post asking them to turn over a new leaf”.
"Family farmers are challenging Tesco and all other large corporate food retailers to come out publicly and state they are going to ‘turn over a new leaf’ and lobby government in Westminster to end the crippling Farm Inheritance Tax completely.
"Put in place a UK-wide Farm Welfare Bill to have family farmers paid a minimum of the true cost of production inflation linked plus a margin for their produce as currently approx 33% of your family farmers across the UK are living below the poverty line.
"Stop large UK food corporates accelerating climate change with food swaps, eg the UK is self-sufficient in lamb, yet a UK ship going south to France with a cargo of lamb, could meet a ship coming north to the UK with Australian lamb,” the campaign group added.
FFA said it would reveal the location of its next protest via its Facebook page.