YOU AND I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH SCARCITY: ‘The era of cheap food is over,’ says Waitrose chief.

Bailey will unveil the “Farming for Nature” scheme at Leckford, the Waitrose farm in Hampshire where they have been farming regeneratively since 2020. The supermarket wants to source “as much as possible” of its UK meat, milk, eggs, fruit and vegetables from farms that use regenerative practices, such as reducing pesticide use and ploughing and turning over field margins to pollinators. The aim is that by 2035, all of its UK supply chain for these items will be from regenerative farms. It is aware it will be a huge learning curve for Waitrose farmers and can’t predict how many will sign up, but Bailey is determined that the supermarket should lead the way.

“I think there was a point at which we realised we had to do something,” he says. It sounds very noble, but some would say supermarkets have a major part to play in getting where we are now, having engaged in a systematic price war that has pushed farmers into intensification. Does Bailey, who worked for Sainsbury’s for 18 years – starting in the fresh food department and working his way to become its grocery buying director, before he joined Waitrose in 2020 – feel guilty?

He laughs awkwardly. “I feel responsible,” he says. “I’m part of a generation of people who are in the right place at the right time to make a change. And I feel that burden.”

“I think we’re seeing the end of the era of cheap food, because of the impact of that cheap food – not just on people’s health but the external impact, the environmental impact, the societal impact of that cheap food. We need to witness the end of cheap food and a reversal of the value of the food people are eating.”

The ghost of FDR smiles; as Amity Shlaes wrote, in the 1930s, “Roosevelt led the country in passing the Agricultural Administration Act, which taxed middlemen in order to give a greater share of revenue to farmers. The Act also restricted production and sent subsidies to those on the farm. Six million young pigs were killed early to drive up pork prices; farmers were instructed to plow crops under.”