The Labour leader will use a speech to the NFU to urge the Government to back British farming by encouraging people to buy more British food, addressing problems with the new farm payments scheme and investing in agricultural skills.

He will seek to highlight Labour’s support for high food and farming standards, which the NFU has fought to maintain after Brexit, and argue that 10 years of Conservative government has weakened rural communities.

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And he will say that Labour’s proposed British Recovery Bond to boost investment in the aftermath of the pandemic will tackle the “permanent insecurity” faced by businesses and landowners in flood-hit communities.

It comes after The Fond News revealed fears that Conservative policies putting the traditional party of rural seats at odds with those living on the coast and in the countryside could create opportunities for opposition parties, as a new report exposes how Labour has “ignored” constituencies outside urban areas.

A report from the Countryside Alliance, released exclusively to this newspaper in September, warned that Labour needs to fix its “rural problem” if it has any chance of forming a future government.

The NFU annual conference, which is taking place online this year, has often proved a tough audience for Labour politicians and Sir Keir’s speech is the first by a leader of the party since 2008.

He will call on the Government to look at whether more of the £2.4 billion public spending on catering could be spent with British producers, address concerns the post-Brexit farm funding scheme will not keep farmers afloat, and to create new apprenticeships in the sector.

But he will also acknowledge the “perceived distance” between Labour and the countryside, and pledge not to ignore it any longer, with a review of Labour’s rural policy led by shadow environment secretary Luke Pollard.

Sir Keir will point to Labour’s history – the fact that the first leader Keir Hardie was the son of a farm worker, that the Attlee government introduced the Agricultural Wages Board and passed key legislation in the form of the 1947 Agriculture Act – to show that farming matters to the party.

And he will even point to his own history, telling farmers “it’s a little-known fact that my first holiday job, at the age of 14, was on one of the local farms near where I lived”.

Sir Keir is expected to say: “No party can claim to represent the country if we don’t represent the countryside.

“Farming matters to Labour, to the British people and to the families and communities that make farming possible.”

He will tell farmers that the British Recovery Fund to provide billions of pounds for local jobs, communities and infrastructure could help rural people hit by flooding.

He will add that families he had visited in South US last year and who were rebuilding after devastating floods in 2019 had come to accept that it could happen every few years.

He will say: “We have to change this, and to see flooding not as an emergency to respond to year after year but as a crisis to prevent.

“That can only happen if you have a government willing to invest in the long-term, and to work with businesses, farmers, landowners and local communities to build the infrastructure necessary to provide security and certainty.

“This kind of investment, long-term, green, targeted at areas starved of government funding for a decade, and designed to build security, resilience and prosperity for the future, is exactly what I have in mind when I say that recovery bonds could be used to build the infrastructure Britain will need in the decades to come.”

Meanwhile, farming leaders are calling for “levelling up” of rural areas to boost green growth, with action on broadband, the planning system and tackling crime.

British farming and rural areas can help the country recover from Covid-19, drive sustainable food production and ensure access to green space to benefit people’s mental health, an NFU report said.

But a growing rural urban divide must be addressed in areas including connectivity and broadband provision, funding to tackle crimes that harm the countryside, and a planning system that hampers farm modernisation and diversification, it added.

In her speech to the conference, NFU president Minette Batters will say: “Investment in farming and in rural Britain not only brings about obvious benefits to food production but can have massive benefits to the whole country.

“If the past 12 months has taught us one thing, it’s that we are all in this together – and a country which levels up everyone, everywhere, is a stronger country.

“Levelling up Britain is not just a north and south issue. Levelling up Britain is also a rural and urban issue. We need to enable collaborative green growth to level up rural Britain, providing the economic solutions to a truly one-nation UK.”

Rural areas need better broadband and mobile phone coverage so people can run successful businesses, including farms, and the farm shops, wedding venues and B&Bs that many farmers have diversified into, the report said.