Ahead of addressing delegates at NFU Scotland's conference in Glasgow on February 8, Mr Futter encouraged the agricultural sector to challenge supermarket and distributor demands for low-cost products.
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Mr Futter said: "The 2024 Oxford Farming Conference [OFC] report firmly states that the practice of farmers subsidising consumers' appetite for cheap food cannot continue.
"After years of ‘permacrisis' fuelled by Brexit, the Ukrainian conflict, the Covid-19 pandemic and inflation running up to 20 per cent, farming's confidence and bank balances are at an all-time, unsustainable, low."
He added recent events had exposed pre-existing and fundamental weaknesses in the supply chain, with more farmers asking whether it was worth producing food due to the risk versus reward ratio.
"Widely, retailers get a bad press but, as I was told on a number of occasions, the most sustainable and efficient distribution model is ‘retail to consumer' and that the UK has probably the highest standards of production in the world. The further you move away from the UK, the lower those standards can become and the bigger the food safety risk, as well as the food security risk."
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He added trust had been eroded between the farming sector and retailers.
"The retailers have become more sophisticated at finding ways of getting better prices and most farmers, growers and packers have not kept up."
He added Scotland's ‘abundance of water' and its place as a world class exporter of Scotch whisky and salmon meant it was ‘well set' for the future.
"Farmers and growers need to make sure they are part of it," Mr Futter said.
