North's agriculture minister warns of food shortages

Soaring grain prices could force food shortages as farmers go out of business, the North's Agriculture minister said today.

Michelle Gildernew said producers should receive a fair price for products or face collapse.

She has written to supermarkets about escalating cereal prices due to increased demand from the renewable energy sector in the US and difficult worldwide conditions.

She told the Assembly: "It is having a detrimental impact on the industry and I do think that we will see price rises very shortly.

"I warned last week that if we didn't see the price of food going up... then we could see producers going out of business and we could be talking about actual food shortages and we don't want to see that happen.

"I think we do need to see a fair price for a product that has been born or grown here and I do want to see farmers getting a better price for their product."

The minister has written to Tesco, Sainsburys, ASDA, M&S, Musgrave Group, Henderson Group, Dunnes Stores, Curleys and Co-Op.

She has said producers cannot be expected to continue making losses against massive and increasing costs for grain and animal feed.

These have been caused by global trading conditions and she said poultry and pig farmers would be particularly hard hit by rising costs.