UK farmers face a stark picture of the challenges faced by UK farming after a stitched year in he industry, says NFU President Tom Bradshaw.
He says volatile input costs, commodity prices at record levels in some farming sectors and on the floor in others, a reduction in direct payments and one of the wettest periods in decades that resulted in a disastrous harvest, have left their mark and many farming businesses worse off.
“To cap a wretched year, we saw a Labour government, which, after 14 years in opposition, promised to reset its relations with British farmers and deliver a much-needed lift to farmer confidence. Instead, it delivered an inflationary Budget and all but removed the tax reliefs for agriculture property and business property.
In all my years in the industry, I’ve never experienced the anger, despair and sense of betrayal following the Chancellor’s announcement to changes to inheritance tax, which has long protected farming’s ability to pass on the farm business to the next generation, thereby protecting food producing businesses and the nation’s food security.”
He said these raw emotions had played out at fermers’ mass lobby of MPs in Westminster, the farmer rally in Whitehall, and at the various tractor protests in London and around the UK, with tens of thousands of farmers passionately expressing how this tax will devastate their businesses, families, rural communities and national food security.
“Ultimately, this needs to be sorted out by the Prime Minister and Chancellor Rachel Reeves with a solution that will mitigate the extreme human impacts of this indefensible family farm tax policy on the current holders of those businesses, for whom, up until 30 October, the best tax advice was to hold their farm until death. Rest assured, we will keep fighting to find a solution.”
