Eggs. Potatoes. Carrots. Leeks. Onions. Poultry. The list of homegrown foods missing in their droves from supermarket shelves over the last 12 months goes on and on.

Our producers, growers and farmers are struggling. The reasons are many and varied. Lack of rainfall, post-Brexit labour shortages, rising fuel and fertiliser costs, and dwindling government funding all have a part to play.

We started 2023 with c.7,000 fewer agricultural businesses than in 2019, according to the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) – something which will come as a surprise to few. To succeed requires tenacity and fortitude, and often the security that comes with other income streams or longstanding commercial foundations.

In the most testing of circumstances, those on the front line of food production – planting crops and raising livestock – are bending, stretching, and flexing in every way possible to keep putting food onto shelves. This takes entrepreneurship and creativity. It requires innovation and development.

The Country Land and Business Association (CLA) recently found that 73 per cent of rural businesses have abandoned plans for growth, citing planning procedures and delays as their main barrier. Of these businesses, more than a third had invested £20,000 into growth projects before falling at planning committees’ hurdles. 20 per cent lost £50,000 or more.

This is money that these businesses do not have to lose. 93 per cent of respondents to the CLA’s survey believed that planning protocols were hampering economic growth in these areas. Our food supply chains and rural communities are at breaking point. We are failing the people who take responsibility for feeding some 70million people in the UK, and for cultivating and protecting vast portions of land.

We desperately need to reform a system that sees business development in rural areas as an opportunity and a necessity rather than a threat. One which recognises the challenges faced by the agricultural sector, but also the opportunities to be seized. A restriction against any progress puts our food supplies at risk and threatens businesses and communities.

Take, for example, vertical farms, which use far less water and land than conventional farming, leaving more room for nature and biodiversity. Part of the viability challenge for vertical farms in the UK is the cost, delays and difficulty involved in achieving planning permission, but climate-proof, local farming, combined with carbon-neutral energy is the ultimate in sustainability.

Or the high-profile example of Diddly Squat Farm, in which Jeremy Clarkson’s enterprise made just £144 profit in a twelve-month period, and was denied permission to turn a lambing shed into a small restaurant serving the farm’s produce, and to run a track across his own land to provide access, in order to shore up profits.

We don’t have to look far to see the missed opportunities for investment, expansion, and the security and productivity that will surely follow.

What we have, however, is an archaic system. The climate crisis has advanced, global politics have reshaped our country, sustainable technology has progressed immeasurably, but rural communities have been left stranded and failing. Our ways of life have changed beyond recognition – we work from home, live in high density areas, communicate and shop online and planning policy should reflect our evolved needs.

We urgently need a planning system that supports innovation and new farming technologies so that the agricultural sector can evolve to achieve commercial and sustainability goals.