X Close

The farmers march on Westminster Labour's budget will destroy rural life

(Credit: Tallis/AFP/Getty)

(Credit: Tallis/AFP/Getty)


November 18, 2024   8 mins

I was a teenager when I began to ask my dad difficult questions about our small farm. Questions about whether we made a profit, and if so, what paid best. The sheep? The cattle? The barley or oats we grew?

He looked at me strangely and told me never to cost anything like a “businessman”, because it would only tell me that being a farmer was a terrible idea, and that we basically worked for nothing. His message was simple — if you want to make money, go do something else.

I’m pretty sure this mindset isn’t taught in business schools, but it is not uncommon on British farms. Being ripped off has become a way of life for farmers. Over the past century, the share of our household expenditure that we spend on food has dropped from about 30% to about 8%. But it gets worse — only about 15p in every pound we spend on food goes to the farmer, the rest is captured by supermarkets, processors and other middle-men. My dad, like many other farmers, worked for little more than minimum wage for much of his life, and with dreadful returns on his investment.

Yes, I’m sure you can probably find some super-wealthy farmers down south who don’t deserve your sympathy, and there are perhaps a heap of other folk who’ve retired to a house and a few fields in the sticks and call themselves “farmers” who probably don’t deserve tax breaks — but don’t mistake that for the reality for many people who work on the land. It takes many farmers half their working lives to sort out their parent’s succession, pay out their siblings, and get their business breaking even. Most farmers I know have second jobs to pay their bills. Some use food banks.

The Labour Government’s Budget has infuriated farmers, with its changes to inheritance tax and its withdrawal of much of the old payments systems faster than promised. Thousands are threatening to march on Westminster next week. But the truth is the system has been exploitative and broken for decades. Long before Rachel Reeves entered the Treasury, farmers have been pulling the short straw. And much of the pain inflicted was courtesy of the Tories. To really understand the heat of farmers’ anger today, you need to understand how we got here.

Britain’s social contract with farmers used to be simple, formed after the Second World War: grow a lot of cheap food so the country never runs out, and don’t trouble us too much about how you do it. Until Brexit, we farmers were part of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and received the same levels of support as farmers across Europe. The result was a period of remarkable productivity growth in farming and a prolonged period of cheap food for consumers.

This period of prosperity would not last. From the Eighties, discontent began to swirl on both sides of the political spectrum. On the Right, the CAP was despised for subsidising food production rather than leaving it to market forces. Farmers had somehow escaped the economic reforms of the Eighties that shuttered the coal mines and other “anachronisms”. The CAP also created mad surpluses of certain produce by over-paying for them. On the Left, meanwhile, environmentalists began to point out the disastrous side effects of the CAP approach — that farmers were making fields monocultural and sterile for nature, and that we were exploiting the natural assets beneath our fields, namely the soil. By the 2000s, there was growing clamour for a more enlightened and “green” agricultural policy.

Europe was slow at delivering this and is still grappling with it, imperfectly. But in 2016, the UK voted to leave the EU and with it the CAP. Farmers were as bamboozled, deceived, confused, idealistic, and naïve as any other group of British people faced with that nonsensical binary choice.

After Brexit, the Government promised that the old level of CAP funding would be maintained at £2.4 billion for the foreseeable future. Yet the subsidy system would look different. The post-Brexit social contract was that each farm would be offered a transition from the old area-based system to the new Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes intent on delivering “public benefits for public goods”. If you were a progressive “green” farmer, you could go from the flawed old system to making money by providing things the country valued, such as hedgerows, trees, and wetlands.

Having been bashed my whole life for being a “subsidy junkie” farmer, I welcomed these changes. We would transition from a production-obsessed approach to a more balanced one, where we still produced food, but we did so in a far more enlightened way that also made space for nature. Suddenly, the state was paying you to have butterflies, birds and wildflowers on your land, alongside your usual private income from livestock sales.

We were first in line to apply for the new schemes, enthusiastic, like many other farmers. And everyone in British political life seemed to agree that this was what we wanted from our farmers. But the whole vision for this change rested on trust.

Trust that the winding down of the old scheme would coincide with the emergence of the new one.

Trust that progressive farmers could transition between the two so that their income need not vanish.

And trust that that the budget would remain something like it was in real terms, and ultimately rise to what it needed to be to transform rural Britain. At this point, it’s worth saying that, though the old CAP budget of £2.4 billion sounds like a lot, it is actually peanuts given the scale of the transformation needed — the entire budget for farming, food and nature for the UK is basically the same as the Manchester Health Trust.

We believed that the budget would not only remain the same in real terms, but that it would ultimately rise to meet our national objectives and legal commitments on addressing biodiversity loss and climate change. No one has even bothered to work this out yet, but estimates I’ve heard spread from about £4 billion to £10 billion per annum to transform British landscapes. This is not to “subsidise” farming as it would have done in the past, but to pay for the costs of nature restoration.

We believed that the Government would honour their promises and align their other policies, including, vitally, trade agreements. If you hold British farms to a higher environmental standard, you have to then protect them from carefree foreign competitors — otherwise it is all rank hypocrisy.

And above all we had faith that the Government would have our backs as we helped them achieve what would once have been considered the most un-farmer-like of feats — including restoring nature, mitigating climate change and alleviating downstream flooding.

Every single one of these promises has been broken in the past four years.

The old schemes have been wound down rapidly — and this month’s Budget sped up the process even further by capping the amount payable, so most farmers won’t get the money they were promised and budgeted for this year.

And worse, the new schemes have been slow to emerge, and due to shortages of staff and expertise at the government agencies, thousands of farmers have not been able to enter them. In the past financial year, the underspend on the new schemes was £358 million, and there is suspicion that that figure may double this year. This means that so far hundreds of farmers have presented their plans for nature restoration and been turned down or excluded from the new schemes. The economics of this farce were horrific, with the income for hill farmers dropping at least 38% because of this botched transition. We’re seeing a staggering squandering of good will and opportunities to restore nature around rural Britain.

The budget has remained at £2.4 billion, but because of inflation that is now worth about 40% less in real terms than when we left the EU. That’s a massive cut in funding in real terms. And the headline budget figure means nothing if farmers can’t actually access it because of the bottlenecks.

But British farmers have also been massively undermined by the Tories signing trade deals with Australia, Canada and other nations that gave away any semblance of protection for our farmers. A foreign farmer can now not only produce food cheaper because they work outside of UK regulations, but they can sell their products in British markets. You could scarcely devise a more unfair trading system. It favours the less sustainable farmer abroad over the more sustainable British farmer — and is leading to Britain importing ever more cheap food from abroad, which is often then processed and labelled as “British” in the supermarket. Our morals are applied at home, and yet are absolutely ignored when it comes to imports. We were promised by every prime minister post-Brexit that this wouldn’t happen — and yet it has.

You shouldn’t care about this because of the welfare of farmers, that would completely miss the point. It will be you and your family who go hungry if we hit a disaster, not the farmers. No, you should care because we have a highly risky just-in-time food system that isn’t fit for purpose in an increasingly fractured geopolitical world. Donald Trump is preaching “American First”, and he’s not alone in heading in that protectionist direction. The Chinese, Russians, the EU, and others are securing their food supplies for a future of scarcity — our dipshit policy is to “Leave it to Tesco”. That’s wildly unsafe in a world where global supplies can no longer be taken for granted.

Of course, few people believe we should have an entirely closed food system — it doesn’t make sense to grow bananas here. But there needs to be some kind of regulatory and support equity between British farmers and imported goods. British farmers now lag far behind their EU and American counterparts in terms of support and trade protections.

All the while, supermarkets shamelessly rip off British farmers and use imports of food we can easily produce in our own fields to manipulate prices. Farmers are almost entirely powerless in their dealings with them.

All this has been compounded by a raft of absurd offset schemes that allow other businesses to shift their carbon footprints on to land, inflating its value and outcompeting farmers. And everyone from house builders to pension funds has been hiding their money in land as a tax dodge — inflating the price of land way beyond its farming value, which is something the budget doesn’t address.

The reality of the “new deal for farmers” has been one damn rip-off after another. After 20 years of environmental rhetoric, and farmer bashing, Britain has failed to offer most farmers a shot at a decent future. Most have been left to return to a heavy production focus. And yet the environmentalists who led the attacks on the old production subsidies seem to have ghosted away, or lost interest in the fact that the brave new world hasn’t materialised, leaving their erstwhile farming allies deep in the shit.

“The reality of the ‘new deal for farmers’ has been one damn rip-off after another.”

The farmers who never believed a word of it, the hardcore sceptics who focused on productivity-growth, have been proven right, and the idealists like me have been left looking like naïve fools. And to make matters worse, Labour won’t even admit what they’ve destroyed. In the past few months, the very promises themselves have evaporated. It’s as if the last 20 years of talk about change never even happened. The bold environmental promises the Prime Minister made at COP29 are effectively nonsensical without a supported transformation of UK farming.

Labour’s Budget has created a firestorm about Agricultural Property Relief. The so-called “family farm tax” seems to have hit a nerve with people because it is deeply unfair and provides a useful stick for the right-wing press to beat them with.

And it is probably true that with some good succession planning and an expensive tax advisor, much financial pain can be avoided by most small farms. But that’s not really the point. The Budget doesn’t make sense as anything more than a short-sighted tax grab. Taxation should distinguish between working farmers and tax-dodging chancers. By all means go after the big estates. But going after working farms struggling to survive is cruel. Labour should distinguish between land being sold so their owners can make a profit, and land with an inflated value which often creates little or no wealth advantage to those holding it to farm. After all, land isn’t money.

The Budget fails to fit into any kind of coherent approach towards building a better countryside, viewing farmers purely as a source of taxation. Any kind of progressive vision for rural Britain needs farmers in their thousands to be agents of change — which is impossible when they’re under vast financial pressure. When the government cuts farmer support, it reduces the amount of “public goods” in the country — which crudely means less hedgerows, less wetlands, less birds, and less insects. It is profoundly self-defeating.

Many environmentalists have completely misjudged this issue. As less and less of taxpayer’s money goes to farmers, the Government has less and less leverage over how they run their businesses, and less right to ask anything of them beyond pursuing their own self-interest.

Someday, the Government will have to go back to farmers and rebuild that deal. And when that happens most of them are not going to play ball. Many will drift to the populist Right as they have done in America; they will say that if the progressives can’t deliver anything better, you may as well vote for the folks who will cut your taxes. You either believe politicians can come up with the funding for progressive change, and can honour their promises over time, or you don’t. And for most farmers the past few months have killed that belief — both Labour and the Conservatives carry their fair share of blame for that.

Our every field will now have to be worked harder and sweated as an asset. The progressive greener dream for UK farming has died.

***

James Rebanks’ new book The Place of Tides is published by Allen Lane.


James Rebanks is a fell farmer and the best-selling author of The Shepherd’s Life. His latest book is The Place of Tides.

herdyshepherd1

Join the discussion


Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber


To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.

Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.

Subscribe
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

85 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Sophy T
Sophy T
20 days ago

Labour hates farmers as they see them as pro-Tory, pro-hunting and having rural values which are the opposite of Islington values.
As you say, great damage will be done to rural life which will affect everyone – not just farmers. However such is Labour’s loathing of them that any amount of collateral damage is worth it if farmers are punished.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
20 days ago
Reply to  Sophy T

Labour, in fact, Socialists in general, have no perception of Business Risk.

So little that they are relying on suitable weather, not only for crop production, but also for Energy production.

Saigon Sally
Saigon Sally
17 days ago
Reply to  Sophy T

The real disgrace is that the Tories treated farmers, rural voters and their natural core constituencies so shabbily over many many years. We know what to expect from hate filled socialists so it should have come as no surprise

Aidan Trimble
Aidan Trimble
16 days ago
Reply to  Sophy T

The swathes of sneering Leftists calling in to radio phone-ins or gleefully commenting on Twitter is incredibly revealing about the ideological basis for Labour’s attacks on farming.

David L
David L
16 days ago
Reply to  Sophy T

Labour hates everyone who isn’t in the public sector, or a grooming gang.

Kiddo Cook
Kiddo Cook
20 days ago

This all makes sense if you believe Drax B is carbon negative and that windmills are the answer. “Leave it to Tesco” brilliant comment. Yep, the market know best but our governments abdicated responsibility for British interests years ago, that’s why there’s no industry left and Port Talbot is owned by Tata who are allowed a £500m bribe. Selling out our own farmers to foreigners is consistent with the wider sell out to multicultural idiocy, identity woke nonsense and allowing servitude to WEF elites at Amazon, P&O and myriad other PE carpetbaggers. A bigger revolt is required….

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
20 days ago
Reply to  Kiddo Cook

Why did you go into the garden to get the carrots for dinner?

Where do you think carrots come from?

The supermarket … …

And the Climate Worriers hardly help the situation.

Andrew Langridge
Andrew Langridge
19 days ago

Just heard a tax advisor on Peston say that with some tax planning only a few hundred farms will actually suffer from this tax. If it truly is a family farm, assets will be transferred before death.
At the same time it is fixing a tax loophole in which people like Dyson are hiding wealth.

Steven Carr
Steven Carr
18 days ago

Gosh, these foolish farmers are panicking for no reason.
I wonder why they are so ignorant about their own farms.

Andrew Langridge
Andrew Langridge
18 days ago
Reply to  Steven Carr

Gosh, I wonder why people with capital assets are so keen to keep hold of them

Andrew Buckley
Andrew Buckley
20 days ago

Well said James,
For decades the mantra of cheap food from anywhere has left money to be spent on those items such as inflated housing prices and new mobile phones that keep the real money men (and women) happy.
I have no answers, simply depressing how any food security let alone reducing food miles and then animal welfare and production standards is totally ignored.
The missing items on the shelves during Covid lockdown will be nothing on what could happen when the world, next, hits a crisis point.
Food production is not a level playing field, it is a mess.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
20 days ago
Reply to  Andrew Buckley

Sixty years ago, after a news item about agricultural policy in the USSR, my Dad pointed out that the Socialists weren’t very good at Farming.

I noticed the the change in terminology: it says it all. And the mistake is now across the West, though the US does offer some hope.

Tony Price
Tony Price
19 days ago

I’m a long way from being an expert, but what little I know about the majority of US farming practices and animal welfare does not offer any hope at all, just despair.

P Carson
P Carson
16 days ago
Reply to  Tony Price

US farming hasn’t been sustainable…. for at least the past 80 years. Sarc.

Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
14 days ago

What has saved the US from this type of nonsense is that in a country where almost nothing is held sacred, farmers and farming enjoy an almost mythic status. The cultural experience of expanding across a continent one small family farm at a time has left a powerful legacy. Even hard core environmental advocates are careful not to poke this particular bear too roughly.

It helps that agriculture is one of few industries where America still leads the world. The unions and American manufacturing have lost their leverage and lobbying presence but big agriculture and its array of satellite industries are strong as they ever were. As an American I have many worries about our country’s future, but mass starvation is not among them.

Dennis Roberts
Dennis Roberts
19 days ago
Reply to  Andrew Buckley

One of the things I like about this site is that sometimes you’ll see a comment such as this –

‘For decades the mantra of cheap food from anywhere has left money to be spent on those items such as inflated housing prices’

that you’ll see made nowhere else and sums up exactly what I think.

We’ve destroyed our society, industry and food supply for high house prices. It’s idiocy of a level I find difficult to comprehend and it’s barely ever mentioned.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
19 days ago
Reply to  Dennis Roberts

That certainly isn’t the whole story, even though it does ring true.

Some refrained from that excess, and spent it on booze, birds and fast cars, with the rest just squandered. 🙂

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
19 days ago
Reply to  Dennis Roberts

All of the ‘players’ involved, the politicians, bureaucrats, NGO executives, etc., have their own personal wealth tied-up in the rapid rise of real estate values. Forget about politics, public service and the future of your nation. Only their real estate matters.

j watson
j watson
20 days ago

That was worth reading. The more recent inheritance tax put into the context of a decade or more of chaotic Policy, with Brexit of course playing a starring role.
The problem now is we are fundamentally poorer. To invest more in the form of farming we may want and need costs. Some things can’t be easily squared in the short term.
Of course elements of the Right wanted a free trade deal with the US that would have allowed more farm exports into the UK clobbering our own farmers even more – on top of the deals with Australia and NZ. It may still be a battle to come depending on how hard Trump pushes for quid pro quo to avoid tariffs.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
20 days ago
Reply to  j watson

Citing the EU as a paragon of farming policy is utter nonsense. Just ask Dutch, or French, farmers how they’re faring.

Of course, farmers like being subsidised but the issue goes far deeper with our preference for choice and ease of access to food via supermarkets by far the main culprit. The author identifies this, but his view – as is yours – is skewed by the failures of successive governments to adapt to the changing needs of farming and food production. Brexit has far wider national importance than just a one-sided analysis that you don’t seem able to see beyond.

It takes a Labour administration – already holed below the water line (there’s a naval analogy you’ll understand) to apply the coup de gråce with the politically-insane inheritance tax, like feudal barons seeking to screw their serfs. The left will never learn.

j watson
j watson
20 days ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

CAP certainly needed reform. But arguably EU farmers remain better protected than ours, if that is what one prioritises.
Withdrawing the payments our farmers received, failing to adequately replace and then doing trade deals to undercut some of their produce, not quite what was expected was it. Plus all the twaddle about a US deal.
The Author admitted the Inheritance tax will catch a good number for whom land is an investment and tax dodge. The family farm needs assets c£3m+ before any tax, and then it’s spread over some years. That said one can see how straw and camel’s back can happen and that’s a point the Author was also making.
Ships holed below waterline can still function. There are water tight compartments shipmate. But the analogy that perhaps better is slow progress into heavy seas.

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
20 days ago
Reply to  j watson

Ask French farmers how they feel about Mercosur.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
20 days ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

There is a perception that if farming is ceased all of nature will revive into an idyllic landscape. The National Park Authorities have no understanding of land management and the public are fed completely inaccurate drizzle about the positive effects of vegetarian diets. Your recent article of iodine deficiency in woke diet followers is the tip of the iceberg. We as a nation need farmers.
We need locally produced food and the producers paid a realistic wage. For a farmer that should be twice a train driver.
(Train drivers should be replaced by robots anyway)
Underlying all this discontent is the failure of all National Parks to administer farming grants properly. They made judgements on farming practice.” We don’t like pigs in the Peak Park” “ All farmers are wealthy”
The Labour Party are ignorant of basic economics which is why every government following Labour has to implement “austerity “ which just means not overpaying TUC members

j watson
j watson
18 days ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

The recent story of Govt policy on farming is decidedly mixed and Brexit clearly part of that story.
As regards the Inheritance tax – remember about half a million people die in UK every year. About 500 inherit land worth over £2m (and even fewer for that over £3m if they were married to the deceased). Finally this small number will join the rest of us and pay some inheritance tax, albeit at half the rate with some additional exemptions and 10 yrs to pay it! How fortunate and privileged.
The tax is likely to reduce land values and make the purchase of that which may be sold to pay the tax more affordable for the smaller family farmer. It may also as a result reduce some rents. Or are you supportive of entrenching monopolies? There is a v long history of a small number of UK citizens owning alot of land generating scare stories to avoid paying their share the same as everyone else.

David Hedley
David Hedley
17 days ago
Reply to  j watson

I often appreciate the challenge to the prevailing view that you bring in the comment section, irrespective of my own view. On this topic, I think your points are badly mistaken. They read rather like an UK Treasury analysis, where apparently rational logic leads inexorably to the wrong conclusion. In this instance, it is clear that the result of Labour’s policy will not be fairness, but rather the destruction of the way of life of villages and communities which are bound together by generations of farming families. These families will be forced to sell their land, probably at a discount, to large corporations, such that we will probably see 3 -5 enterprises controlling the majority of agricultural and farming activity in the UK. This is what has occurred in the US, Brazil and Argentina, and I would strongly caution against following their models.

John Galt
John Galt
20 days ago

Pissing off the farmers is the dumbest damn decision a country can make, whatever you do keep the farmers happy. Because as the article noted, when food gets tight it isn’t the farmers that will starve.

Do whatever it takes to keep the farmers happy Britain or you’ll find yourself in a very very bad place. Remember even worse for Britain than massive amounts of unchecked immigration is having a Britian where people no longer want to immigrate to, and if you run out of food that will happen in a flash.

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
20 days ago
Reply to  John Galt

If you run out of food, the problem will be less that people don’t want to come to Britain, it will be the unrest and the exodus.

Judith Shapland
Judith Shapland
20 days ago

Thank you Mr Rebus ….perfectly expressed & sums up ALL the difficulties farmers face at the mo …I hope this is reprinted in other journals ….See you at the March

Sophy T
Sophy T
20 days ago

There’s a big protest planned for next week which I’m going to attend it will be interesting to see if there’s two-tier policing in action.
Jeremy Clarkson said  “Perhaps if I had draped my tractor in a Palestinian flag, it would be different” so maybe all the farmers and protestors should turn up in keffirs etc then reveal gumboots and barbours etc once the protest has got underway.

Anna Bramwell
Anna Bramwell
20 days ago
Reply to  Sophy T

I hope they do bring their tractors, despite the Met order that they mustn’t.

Susie Bell
Susie Bell
20 days ago

It’s the same story in every sector of British endeavour; hold us to gold plated standards of production but leave our markets wide open to some shabby practices abroad that undermine us. We haven’t had sensible, experienced people in government for decades. The route to politics now is further education, NGO, SPAD, MP all without knowing a single thing about the pressures on the private sector. There is little to no understanding of who pays for everything, how the money is generated and just how hard it can be to make a living providing for the UK population who have non of the German zeal for buying at home. A population addicted to spending money and acquiring as many toys for their £ as possible, leaves quality home production in the doldrums. Added to that a chancellor who insists on seeing us as ‘rich’ and deserving of plunder rather than support for long term prosperity. Following the budget there will be a rise in unemployment and more small businesses closing their doors for good. Unfortunately this government was elected by the public sector workers and immigrants who are as clueless as ministers. Conservative politicians are guilty of the same bubble mentality when it comes to their ‘career’. All backed up by the their handmaidens at HMRC and the numerous regulators who police us, with no mercy when it comes to forcing utter compliance with the promiscuous laws changes that pour from Westminster to tighten the noose almost daily. Of course this government would like all small businesses to hand over their enterprises to the globalist vultures waiting for rich pickings. They are able to avoid much of the threatening behaviour of the civil service by off shoring profits, cutting deals with the friends their lobbyists have made in parliament. The system is rotten from the top down.

John Ramsden
John Ramsden
19 days ago
Reply to  Susie Bell

The Government obviously want to consolidate smaller family farms into larger corporate collectives, the same as how they want to merge pension funds. It’s ironic that this policy will in effect take us back centuries to a time when the land was owned by a handful of feudal magnates, and farm tenants and workers were mostly serfs working for their lords and masters. One might think this would be anathema to a left wing government, but apparently not.

The same applies to private property ownership. Whether carelessly or intentionally, the current Labour government seem to be heading in a direction where this will decline over time, and ever more of us will be renting properties from large housing associations. Apart from reducing personal freedom, declining personal property ownership is very bad from a social stability standpoint: In times past people would riot and rebel at the drop of a hat because in not owning their own property they had little to lose.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
19 days ago
Reply to  John Ramsden

Central control for greater efficiencies!

Just ask the USSR for confirmation.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
19 days ago
Reply to  John Ramsden

Posted a comment about the Labour feudal baron/serf approach earlier, but disappeared. In reply to j watson so probably due to the number of downvotes he garners. Still, it’s bloody annoying.

Dennis Roberts
Dennis Roberts
19 days ago
Reply to  John Ramsden

It feels a little like a continuation of enclosure to me. Consolidate ownership to increase efficiency, even if by ‘theft’. I struggle to believe it will be more efficient.

Ruth Ross
Ruth Ross
19 days ago
Reply to  John Ramsden

World Economic Forum, Starmers’ best friends. “You will own nothing. And you will be happy”.

Hugh Marcus
Hugh Marcus
18 days ago
Reply to  John Ramsden

John. That would suggest there’s a plan & competency to deliver it. The evidence suggests an absence of both.
The IHT mess is obviously typical of government incompetence coupled with no idea of unintended consequences.

The reality of this misguided policy is that the wealthy (like they’ve always done) will find ways to ensure they pay as little tax as possible.

Ordinary farming families haven’t that luxury & will get hammered.

What the government & most urban commentators forget is that what’s handed over at succession isn’t just land but a running farm business.
Like any business it has assets.

In the case of a farm that’s all the machinery & livestock etc etc.

It means therefore that it’s actually not very difficult to get to the tax threshold with a modest sized farm.

As for James’ comments about being naive around the environmental schemes promised post Brexit.

I am famously an anti Brexit farmer.

I never believed a word of the promises made, simply because they were made by the same liars who promised that Brexit would be good.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
20 days ago

I am utterly bewildered by much that was said in what was a very readable, though somewhat unsettling, article.

Was the EU good for farmers and farming? Or bad?

Does the writer seriously believe either that changes to farming can, in any meaningful sense, help to ‘mitigate climate change’? Or that agriculture should even be spoken of at all, in the UK at least, as a cog in the illiberal machine that drives the Net Zero religion forward with ever more ideological, and increasingly intolerant, fervour?

If the writer does feel that farmers can be helped, through subsidy and/or other financial support, to bring back nature to Britain’s farming landscape then my question is this: What has caused the destruction of nature in Britain’s farming landscape over the last forty, or more, years? EU policy perhaps? Or maybe the relentless drive to bring ever-cheaper foods to supermarket shelves? Or the industrialisation of British farming – either through the aggregating of farmland into ever larger ‘corporate’ estates by greedy ‘non-farmers’ (in the traditional sense) interested only in profit at all costs; or the adoption of inhumane animal husbandry (factory or intensive farming methods) together with a pesticide and herbicide driven drive to achieve ever higher yields? Or possibly all of the above. Or none.

I genuinely don’t know the answers. As a consumer I feel both a profound sense of loss, in terms of our natural world, and a powerful sympathy with the farmers who, it seems, are now pawns in the profoundly dispiriting political games being played by the globalists who want to enforce change as a means to control us all.

My natural sympathies lie with the writer but it is the ‘not-knowing’ that I find so frustrating. Where does the truth lie in the miasma of propaganda and self-righteous virtue-signalling that is presented to us (not by the writer of this article I must make clear!), the unvoiced masses, day after dispiriting day? Deliberately hidden is, I believe, the answer to that particular question.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
19 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

I agree.

What is lacking is relevant Informed Discussion, not ideology, or marketing gobbledgook.

That means people that have Experience and Education discussing each point in depth until it is obvious what can be done and what needs further analysis. What we have, currently, is political ideology trashing long standing Scientific understanding, especially by the BBC.

The BBC have a blanket ban on anything criticising the fake Climate Emergency or destructive NET Zero policies. They don’t understand Business, Markets, Supply Chains, or Risk Management. For example, unless people have been involved in the business of farming, like a family farm, a History or PPE degree only isolates them from the reality of that industry. Intelligence isn’t a substitute for Experience.

But, it’s the same across the board, whether its Farming, Manufacturing, Oil/Gas Exploration and Production, Mining, Education, anything, in fact! We have a monoculture within the Political and Legacy Bubble, devoid of any Wealth Creating Activity.

The point of Brexit wasn’t to improve government, instantly. No, MPs rubber stamping EU directives, had forgotten how to govern and needed to relearn the skills needed. So Brexit was the first step in in allowing government to be improved. That is why so many rejected the last government: they had the opportunity to change things for the better, and opted out, completely.

Informed Discussion is also what Science requires, while ‘The Science’ follows what Science used to know, and ignores any further advance in knowledge, usually because of political convenience. There is so much to do here as well.

Mrs R
Mrs R
18 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Excellent comment – completely agree.

Phil Mac
Phil Mac
20 days ago

Strategic independence is the critical point; it’s insane to rely on imports from potentially unfriendly sources on food just as it is on energy.
I’m all for “leave it to Tesco” actually, because the free market finds the best solution, but only when it’s fair on terms. If we want to impose higher costs on domestic producers then either we have to do the same to imports through tariffs, or we need subsidies. I’m so against subsidies I can’t believe I just typed that but the market has to be fair to work.
Anyway, this Government is even worse than the last – at least some of them had an understanding of what it means to try to make a profit, this lot are utterly ignorant of the concept.

Delta Chai
Delta Chai
19 days ago
Reply to  Phil Mac

The free market moves towards an efficient solution, but maximising efficiency is at odds with resilience. And when it comes to domestic food production, governments have a good reason to prioritise resilience, even when individual producers don’t.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
19 days ago
Reply to  Phil Mac

Leaving it to Tesco has resulted in the farmers margins being driven down to nothing and being undercut by cheaper foreign imports.
Not a good way to help British farmers or increase resilience in the nations food supply

Susan Grabston
Susan Grabston
20 days ago

The writer’s point about the supermarkets is correct. During my 30 year career in FMCG there were FIVE OFT investigations into channel abuse in the industry. Every single enquiry came back “nothing to report” for the simple reason no one would talk. There was too much at stake including for the P&Gs and Unilevers who were facing the power of 4 supermarket chains controlling 94% of the market.
Ironically my mother’s family are all farmers. Growing up watching the 24/7 effort.in all weathers, the telegram informing us of the death of a 32 year old uncle who fell into his machine dog tired during harvest, the financial impact of a poor harvest, the lack of capital to invest for a better future …. the only person I knew who made a decent living was my uncle who grew strawberries in.Co Wexford.
The UK has the shortest food chains in the world. We only.grow60% of our own food. We are vilnerable, and this attack on the farming community risks.

John Ramsden
John Ramsden
19 days ago
Reply to  Susan Grabston

Not sure, but I suspect we now grow a lot less than 60% of our own food. Nearly a century ago, in WW2, with U boats prowling the high seas, we had to import wheat and other basic foods. Even in the 1880s (the last time we were self-sufficient in basic foodstuffs) we started importing wheat from Russia and thereabouts.

And that was when the population was a third of what is it now, and there was far more farmland in the UK. Mind you, perhaps modern fertilisers and more productive plant varieties have partially compensated. But I suspect that anyone who delved into the figures would find the situation is currently pretty dire!

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
19 days ago
Reply to  John Ramsden

I can just about remember, in the 1960s I think, some Environmentalist group 🙂 coming up with the figure that, at the time, Britain’s food production could feed about 30 million.

Later on, the EEC/EU forced change that was usually more suitable for farmers in mainland Europe, while Britain had adapted to certain foods arriving from the Commonwealth, so specialised in other crops.

Kevin Godwin
Kevin Godwin
19 days ago

I recall reading an article some years ago from the charity Optimum Population Trust. The article suggested that the maximum sustainable population for the UK, based on the amount of land available for cultivation was around half the current level. So somewhere in the mid 30s million.
Additionally, the article suggested that France was about right in sustainability. France has approximately the same population as the UK but with more than twice the land mass.

Dennis Roberts
Dennis Roberts
19 days ago
Reply to  John Ramsden

The most recent numbers I’ve seen is that we produce about 50% of our own food, but the OP will likely know better than me so I’ll take her numbers.

Daryl Hughes
Daryl Hughes
19 days ago
Reply to  Susan Grabston

That’s right, the UK grows a little under 60% of its own food and imports the rest (a proportion of the imports are foodstuffs that don’t grow well in our climate).
Section 3.1: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/food-statistics-pocketbook/food-statistics-in-your-pocket#origins-of-food-consumed-in-the-uk-2023.
As Mr Rebanks suggests, much of the food we produce is grown using vast amounts of fossil energy, synthetic fertiliser, and at considerable damage to soil and wildlife. Barring some miracle technological breakthroughs, we will become even less food secure as the population explodes and farmland is converted to new housing and infrastructure.

Hugh Marcus
Hugh Marcus
18 days ago
Reply to  Susan Grabston

And ironically Susan, the Lidls & Aldis have meant that growing fruit & especially vegetables in Ireland is now a dead duck with the 15p bag of carrots being the final nail in the coffin. The fertile vegetable fields of the Irish midlands have been ploughed & are now growing maize for ‘green’ electricity. Most of the digesters are miles away so the drop is harvested & transported up to 90 miles by road.
It is absolutely insane.

Anna Bramwell
Anna Bramwell
20 days ago

Look at Reeves favourite photo, a founder of the British Communist Party, who visited Trotsky and Moscow in 1920.( A girl, so that’s ok. Maybe then she picked up the 4 million pounds from them, used to found the CPGB). Let’s remember the non stop famines due to the Bolshevik’s regime, with its handling of the hated peasants. Collectivisation and the extermination of the kulaks followed increasing rationing and rules for the peasantry. Somehow one doesn’t think that Reeves and her mates would hesitate. Rationing of energy is already on the cards. Food rationing next?

Lynwen Brown
Lynwen Brown
19 days ago

Progressive maniacs want to industrialise the countryside. Stop buying into the offset carbon nonsense. It’s an excuse to clear the countryside and impose top down control on the prolls.

John Ramsden
John Ramsden
19 days ago

The craziest part of this farmers’ inheritance tax issue is that the Government expect the changes to yield only something like 500 million pounds a year. That may sound a lot, but when compared with other vast sums the Government spends, on some pretty fatuous and useless projects, it is chicken feed.

There’s the great big white elephant called HS2 for example. Also, I think our UK government is giving way 12 BILLION pounds a year to various third world countries to sponsor their CO2 reduction projects. That’s in addition to the billions handed out to other countries (including India for God’s sake, and possibly even China still!). This is supposedly for poverty relief, but in truth nobody in Government gives two hoots about poor people overseas, and it is actually to buy influence and votes in the UN, as well as “official” bribes for arms sales and the like.

So by shaving a small fraction off these ridiculous overseas payments, all this hoo hah with the farmers could have been avoided, and their subsidies could have been beefed up, as promised, so they can continue their good work.

Mrs R
Mrs R
18 days ago
Reply to  John Ramsden

It is purely ideological, the wish is to drive farmers off the land. The cause is net zero and the advancement of the globalist cause is what hides behind the net zero agenda. They’ve been telling us that the countryside is too white and that farms drive climate change for a long time – the Tories as bad just not as flagrant- thereby prepping the ground for this push against what is seen as one of the last bastions of small c conservatism.
Remember when Blair pledged to purge conservatism from every corner of the country in his pursuit of the anti nation state globalist/Marxist agenda?

Oliver Nicholson
Oliver Nicholson
17 days ago
Reply to  Mrs R

First they came for the Fox Hunters.

Citizen Diversity
Citizen Diversity
19 days ago

Checking out the offerings in a high street chain that sells dried fruit and nuts, I noticed that they had packets of dried sliced apple. Where were they produced? China.
‘…the environmentalists who led the attacks on the old production subsidies seem to have ghosted away, or lost interest in the fact that the brave new world hasn’t materialised…’
If anyone wants a brave new world, they have to be brave enough to live in it.

General Store
General Store
19 days ago

Protest won’t do anything unless it is linked to a broader political movement….make Britain great again for want of a moniker. They should all, each and everyone, join Reform….but even that will only work if Farage’s Thatcherite free market globalism can be moderated. The problem is both market and social liberalism

Steve Gwynne
Steve Gwynne
19 days ago

This is obviously quite depressing to read. Presumably because farming and associated nature restoration activities don’t produce much profit if at all and the sector doesn’t have much potential for jobs growth, then it doesn’t feature very highly within the ongoing growth narratives.

Similarly with population levels now so high, the UK is now only 62% self sufficient in food overall but only around 16% self sufficient in fruit and 56% in vegetables.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/agriculture-in-the-united-kingdom-2023/chapter-14-the-food-chain

The large imports of wheat, meat, fruit and vegetables are largely from the EU with some wheat and animal products also coming from Canada and Australia. Since we are nearly self sufficient in grains and meat products, imports of these food stuffs is probably for food processing industries including pet foods.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/food-statistics-pocketbook/food-statistics-in-your-pocket#origins-of-food-consumed-in-the-uk-2023

So I don’t think it is trade deals that are challenging UK food production so much as competition from subsidised farmers in the EU in relation to fruit and vegetables which provides little incentive to grow these in this country, especially tomatoes.

So personally, I think the fundamental problem is UK population overshoot and in a way, UK pet overshoot which is incentivising the need for imports and therefore trade deals.

With a much reduced population via net zero immigration, reduced fertility and natural deaths, then we would have greater capacity to feed ourselves and have land left over to restore nature whilst at the same time reduce pressure on our housing stock and public services and infrastructure which is continually eating into farmland and pushing up prices.

Regarding inheritance tax on farming assets, the threshold clearly needs to rise but I would also like to see a policy in which inheritance taxes are ringfenced for the farming community with environmental charities being given first refusal on any required land sales from large farming estates in order to pay these taxes.

Overall, whilst growth and debt reduction is the priority of government rather than sustainability, resilience and sufficiency, then governments will prioritise the demands of financial markets and the service sector in particular. This will include trying to increase disposable incomes by putting a downward pressure on the price of essentials like food through global competition.

This is why Ed Milliband will be importing renewable energy technologies rather than manufacturing them here even if it increases our trade deficit in goods. This includes importing food as long as farmland is producing more a profit by siting renewable energy technologies on it instead.

James knows that the UK economy is predicated on profit and so should be well aware that farming and food security will always play second fiddle to the profit imperative of governments who want to be seen improving the “standard of living” of the public even if that means eroding the ecological basis of intergenerational survival.

Steve Gwynne
Steve Gwynne
19 days ago
Reply to  Steve Gwynne

I think if farmers grew more beans, like kidney beans, haricot and other smaller beans like ☯️ ones, then we can fertilise our soils, reduce our import carbon footprint and help steer the population towards a more nutritious, mineral , vitamin and protein fiberous food. And they are bloody easy to grow.

How about farmers ditch the directions of the state and start creating a resilient food economy because this government sure as hell isn’t going to do it with their binary approach.

We can make our currency beans and divest from the profit system which is destroying our global ecology with rich countries profiting through the import and export of food by land grabbing from poor countries so we can feed our pets and animals and have an all year consumption of seasonal fruit and vegetables in rich countries by depriving others of their ability to live in a dignified and sustainable way as a result of forced displacement and tied labour.

So if by progressive you mean depriving foreign others of their ability to live as a result of land grabbing in the rest of the world category of food imports.

I think population has to be considered alongside consumption as a union of opposites ☯️ so they can’t be logically separated, only analysed separately. In my opinion anyway.

I suppose the import picture is pretty comprehensive in this gov link so progressives and conservatives need to come up with some ideas about how to guardrail our food and land system.

For me tariffs, subsidies, laissez-faire, regulations are all options from a fully flexible (adaptive) perspective so let’s lose ideology and start thinking common sense and wisdom (a union of opposite minds with the shared goal of social peace ✌️) rather than profit and rights.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/agriculture-in-the-united-kingdom-2023/chapter-14-the-food-chain

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
19 days ago

The suspension of reason, imposed from the top, that has permitted obvious madness like climate apocalypse, open borders, critical race, and more to flourish of course leads to destruction.

Ralph Hanke
Ralph Hanke
19 days ago

May I crassly summarize your essay?

Government subsidies = bad.

IMHO, the sooner we accept this across all sectors of life, the sooner we can all get together and solve our problems for ourselves. Politicians are too busy being politicians to be problem solvers.

Mr. Smith left Washington a long time ago.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
19 days ago

Henry II, in one of his talks with pre-Chancellor Thomas Becket, talked about the unpleasantness of a [Saxon] peasant revolt during his father’s reign.
No doubl that Labour is clueless about such history or, on the very off chance that they do know if it, how to prevent its reoccurrance.

Daniel Lee
Daniel Lee
19 days ago

The fundamental problem here is that “our national objectives and legal commitments on addressing biodiversity loss and climate change” is not the purpose of farming. Period.

Delta Chai
Delta Chai
19 days ago
Reply to  Daniel Lee

The purpose of farming, narrowly defined, is to produce food. Given the extent of farmland and it’s impact on the rest of the country, it’s necessary for farmers to not just produce the largest possible amount of food, but to be responsible stewards of the land as well.

Alan Melville
Alan Melville
17 days ago
Reply to  Delta Chai

Which, to be fair, most of them are, since they want to pass on a viable farm to their families.

Steve White
Steve White
19 days ago

Western leadership under the Neo-Liberal globalists has been, and is hostile to the human beings in the countries living under them. Things are changing, and they are going to change ever more, but the people are going to have to reject the anti-human, and in this case anti-British citizens policies. For that to happen it’s going to take men being brave. Not calling for violence, just bravery. Knowing for sure that you are standing up against something wrong and harmful and for something good and right and true. It’s always good to have the truth on your side. Because the truth transcends party politics for those who love the truth, and those are the people that are going to stand with you. But, be brave!

Will D. Mann
Will D. Mann
19 days ago

Just wait and see what will happen to British farmers if we ever get the elusive trade agreement with Trump’s America!

Keith Merrick
Keith Merrick
19 days ago

Wonderful article. I’m 100% behind British farmers, especially after reading here how shabbily they’ve been treated. But also, from a selfish point of view, I want the countryside to be looked after since I don’t see the point in a Britain without its countryside and I’d certainly trust small farmers to be good custodians of the land than the government, especially THIS government.

John Tyler
John Tyler
19 days ago

Labour’s green agenda is a complete fiction. Use less fuel; source food abroad. Reduce mining; build more ships and planes to transport food from abroad. Look after our green space; turn it over to brambles, gorse and nettles.

It’s as shambolic as a growth agenda that relies on greater taxation of businesses, raised business costs, increased government direction of investment and growing social spending.

Edward De Beukelaer
Edward De Beukelaer
19 days ago

Actually all this comes down to what is more important: the bottom line (=money) or wellbeing/quality of life. If you would like to enjoy good quality of life and wellbeing you have NO choice but to start making sure biodiversity improves (which will help a little to changing climate) nutrition improves and our living environment becomes more respectful of people. Farming plays a huge role in this: healthy soil , healthy food, healthy consumer (and that includes animals as they are ideally part of well balanced farming). The money people will make sure this does not happen because they will also loos clients for their health (illness) industry. Also we do not really like narratives that agree that everything is linked and silo-thinking only serves those who are interested in bottom lines. So the country has to decide to ‘invest in. healthy environments and farms and food or keep pumping more money into an NHS that will never be able to afford our current type of medicine (not one country in the world can afford our current medicine model in any way: hence the change happening in BRICS countries opening up to traditional and conventional medicine cooperation in health care)…
Oh, and as a side comment: it is impossible to ‘be alive’ based on the biological model current medicine uses: it ignores (blindfolds itself to) the complexity of biological systems and the quantum phenomena in our cells… t is only a simplified almost ‘cartoon version’ (easy to sell to MSM) that is used. And yes, I am well aware of the complexity of the knowledge we have but .. during a WHO meeting 2 years ago in one of the speeches (Tel Aviv, by an authority in biochemistry) it was acknowledged we only know about 5% of what happens in our bodies…
Nature has all the inherent knowledge relating to how we function, hence food from healthy soils and healthy farms are actually also medicine…. maybe worth an investment, as long as the chemicals stay out of the farms: there many other methods being developed that are eliminating the need for chemicals, poor Monsanto they may then be staring at a red bank balance

Brett H
Brett H
19 days ago

Gee, it’s like you didn’t even read the article.

Martin Johnson
Martin Johnson
19 days ago

Government by university elite.

“You made a mistake, you trusted us.”
—Otter to Flounder, “Animal House”

Andrew Wise
Andrew Wise
19 days ago

and the idealists like me have been left looking like naïve fools

yep, same for the car manufacturers rushing to build electric cars no one wants!
the sooner we collectively reject all these nanny knows best idealisms the better.
I have a lot of sympathy for Farmers, most of the ones I know are smart hard working people who quite naturally respect the environment they live and work in. Perfectly capable of claiming all the grants nanny wants to dish out and perfectly capable of surviving in a properly competitive market (emphasis on properly competitive).

Roddy Campbell
Roddy Campbell
19 days ago

DEFRA and its toxic progeny Natural England are staffed by townie leftist vegans, or people well down that path.

Governments come and go. But the real damage to farmers and farms continues on a sort of autopilot, with politicians largely ignored.

That’s why subsidies don’t get paid, why fields don’t get ploughed, why a fat lamb pays a farmer £10 profit and sells in a supermarket for £275. The difference pays for a dozen inspectors and clipboard-wavers, all tasked with making farming a little more complicated.

The ignorance of town-raised do-gooding officials in organisations like DEFRA and NE is only matched by their stubborn refusal to contemplate they might actually be a large part of the problem.

David McKee
David McKee
19 days ago

Agriculture everywhere is in a mess. The Americans spend around $30bn a year on subsidies. For the EU, it’s more like €60bn a year. The result is ‘beggar my neighbour’ trade.

The winners are the public, with cheap food, and the monopolistic supermarket chains. The losers are impoverished small farmers and exploited migrant workers.

Steven Carr
Steven Carr
18 days ago

Just like in Hart Street in Southport, Starmer dodged talking to people and avoided talking to the farmers today in Llanduddno.

Mrs R
Mrs R
18 days ago

That Net Zero is intent on destroying our farms is now unavoidably evident.
We can trace it back to the propaganda against milk, dairy and meat. The blame placed on ancient breeds is sheep for “destroying” the fells and uplands of the countryside when access to these very foods along with season vegetables are what lifted the masses out of ill health.
My contempt for those who believe that importing all our food makes any sense or will help “the environment”, let alone affect our climate, knows no depth.
As for those who think lab grown meat is a boon for humanity…

Saul D
Saul D
18 days ago

If you were desperate to raise money for the public sector, better targets would be advertising, copyright (eg film, music and sports), imports of intellectual property, income from legal fees, stamp duty on business sales, on income on excess interest rates and high-fee consumer credit, gambling, political donations… Farming doesn’t seem a good target.

John Lamble
John Lamble
18 days ago

Very little newspaper coverage of the farmland inheritance tax has made clear that this is just the last straw in a series of betrayals of farming. It is vital that this message gets across to the wider public because the current support for farmers in opinion polls is almost certainly based on superficial sentimentality and it is hard to see it withstanding the price to be paid in terms of inconvenience if adequate militancy is applied to change the government’s mind. Use of farming vehicles to disrupt traffic in towns and interference with food supplies have both been suggested and may ultimately be necessary but a ‘hearts and minds’ campaign to support these must start right now.

Steve Gwynne
Steve Gwynne
17 days ago

An intergenerational family farm tax is wrong for two fundamental reasons despite the so-called underlying logic of land redistribution which is easily achieved by simply buying farmland from the open market.

1. A family farm tax will take land from experienced farmers who have the intergenerational experience of achieving high productivity on their land. Thus a family farm tax will reduce farming productivity with the danger that land will be taken out of agricultural use altogether. This is only mitigated by the new owners of the land then renting it back to the original owners which of course will reduce family farm incomes.

2. A higher acreage of land farmed productively and efficiently tends to generate higher profits due to economies of scale which reduces the need for State subsidies and increases the potential for tax revenues.

So overall, Labour wants to reduce farming productivity, reduce profits, reduce tax revenues, increase subsidy payments and disincentivise the intergenerational transmission of good farming practices.

simon lamb
simon lamb
17 days ago

Despite all that has been said, for me this isn’t so much about anti-farm conspiracies but a mixture of political dogma, corruption, ignorance and utter incompetence. Our chancellor was never an economist, but worked at the level of a bank teller. Our PM spent years actively supporting a leader who would have Britain governed by the equivalent of the Socialist Workers party. Now he’s just a hack politician devoid of principle, devoid of conviction, devoid of conscience, with all the charisma of a cardboard box. Say what you like about the Tories, they had it right for most of their time in office and the future looked bright for farms and for conservation, only to be ruthlessly let down by bureaucratic grey men who had lost the plot over just the last two years.
Families will spend billions this Christmas on electronic gadgets they don’t need and toys that will be discarded by spoiled children within hours and end up in landfill. Meanwhile the Christmas dinner will hopefully bring families together and fill them with good cheer at a cheap price that they take for granted. Few will give a moment’s thought to those who laboured hard in all weathers and at all hours to produce it and make this valuable part of Christmas possible, for less than the minimum wage in most cases.
So much planning and effort was put into the ELMs revolution, and it held so much hope for a new dawn in British land management – all now sold down the river by this pretend government of know-nothing, hypocritical, pretend politicians with classist chips on their shoulders the size of bricks. Our rivers are filthy, our countryside disappearing under housing for immigrants, and now our farmland will be throttled for every ounce of produce, and hang the environmental consequences. It’s a betrayal – not just of farmers, but of the British people. Don’t take it lying down – swamp your MPs with emails, texts and phone calls until they scream for mercy!

Bernard Brothman
Bernard Brothman
17 days ago

I am not a Brit, so please excuse my naivate.
You can either allow freedom to farm, with some limited regulations (like no DDT), or you can have many regulations and put tariffs on imported foods that cannot grow or be raised in the UK. Can farmers sell their land for development? Perhaps allow them that option.

Paul Thompson
Paul Thompson
16 days ago

“sell for development” – eventually the great stupidity of this notion will be discovered. When all the farmland is covered by houses, and the supermarkets no longer have food, what then?

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
16 days ago

Don’t forget Lord Salisbury: “Never trust experts.”
But let’s go further. Politicians know nothing about farming, about the economy, about pensions, about healthcare, about helping the poor, about family, about culture. So they rely on experts.
Whaddya say to that, Sir Humphrey?
“Yes, Minister.”

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
17 days ago

Most leftwingers hate farmers, farming and the land.
As Malcom Muggridge said ” Marxism is an urban religion, a product of cheap boarding houses for those who have a grudge against their fellow man and civilisation .”
The British countryside is a product of thousands of years of nurturing. Marxists hate British history,so they hate the history of farming.