Farmers need to stop talking nonsense. I thought it worth sharing an anecdote based upon a BBC Northern Ireland radio discussion I took part in yesterday with regard to Labour's new, very modest, inheritance tax charge on farms passed on by people at the time of their death.
The President of the National Farmers' Union in Northern Ireland claimed that this charge would apply to most farms in Northern Ireland. Under questioning from a very sensible host, he agreed that the average farm that he was talking about was about 100 acres in size and that farmland in Northern Ireland is worth, on average, about £16,000 an acre. There would, of course, be other assets on the farm, including livestock, crops, equipment, and a farmhouse, but let's be realistic and guess that, as a result, the farm as a whole, which would make up the vast majority of the person's estate on death, would not exceed £2.5 million in worth.
Let's also presume that this would, as a family farm, have been farmed by a couple. Each partner in that couple has a £1 million exemption for passing on the farm on death, and presuming that they use this wisely, that would exempt £2 million of farm assets from an inheritance tax charge.
It is also now possible for a couple who write their wills in ways which are very easy to arrange to enjoy an inheritance tax exemption of £1 million when the last survivor dies, which sum does not include the farm because the farming exemption can be added on top of this sum, meaning that in total it is entirely possible for a farming couple to pass on £3 million of farm assets without an inheritance tax charge arising.
An accountant from Northern Ireland who was on the programme failed this out. The discussion continued on the basis that only £1 million of the transfer would be exempt from the charge, which was wholly incorrect.
I pointed out the fact that the discussion was based on an entirely false premise as a result. In fact, as I noted, simply based on the data that the NFU President supplied, it was very obvious that most family farms in Northern Ireland would not be subject to this inheritance tax charge, but despite this, the NFU President claimed that this charge would spell the end of family farming in Northern Ireland, the end of food production there, and be a disaster for UK food security, and all of those claims are complete nonsense.
So why did that happen? What was apparent was that the NFU President and the accountant involved in the discussion had a decided dislike for those they thought to be left-wing, which label was, however, never attached to me. I think we can safely presume as a consequence was that all that they really wanted to promote was political nonsense that was entirely divorced from reality.
These farmers need to read the article that I wrote here yesterday or watch the video that I have posted here today. I made many of the points in both of those on air, but the NFU President then claimed that I was entirely wrong to suggest that imposing inheritance tax on farms would in any way change the value of farmland. That was because, he said, demand for farmland was strong for a great many reasons other than its use for inheritance tax planning.
What did, in fact, become perfectly clear was that he was very pleased to be sitting on assets worth a considerable sum, but what he did not want to do was to make any contribution to society as a consequence. The presenter realised this and so asked the NFU president why he thought his farms should go untaxed when he obviously thought others should pay tax to pay for the subsidies he enjoyed. He appeared unable to answer the question.
If this is the quality of the arguments that farmers can come up with, they really should get back to their land because they obviously have no idea about economics, politics, or tax.
I will also add this exchange in the comments here this morning. I start with a comment from a person called Ted Franke, who has never commented here before:
As a grower of crops, and fourth generation, all I can say is that the cash to pay the IHT just isn't there. In the last 40/45 years of our business, we can say that we have consistently earned below average income. We survive. Farms in the UK have been government subsidised to maintain dirt cheap food in the shops. Over the last 10 years our share of the money to pay our costs is between 35 and 40 % of the shop shelf price. The gross price average of our raspberries is 30% lower now compared to 1998. Our supermarket masters say we should be more efficient. I'm 69 now and most of my life have worked between 100 to 120 hours a week depending on whether we were harvesting or not. Our business has been valued at a ridiculous price. Lots of asset value, little cash which is not enough to pay the potential IHT bill. Also the return is insufficient to borrow the money from the bank to pay the IHT. If farms became more profitable if perhaps people paid a realistic price for their food? Wishful thinking.
How about a complete U turn? No IHT for anyone? Sweden did this a couple of years ago and immediately their revenue took more money overall because people didn't hide their money anymore. Here in the UK the big problem is there is a palpable jealousy in the population, an actual hatred of people who are perceived to maybe “better off”. Well when I was working my 120 hour weeks I was quite happy but not better off than most. In fact many a year the Eastern European fruit pickers earned more than the family members. In 2019 our four family partners earned 100 pounds a month each. Anyone like to swap?
This was my reply:
Ted
I have read some really absurd comments on here in my time, but yours really does rank right up there. Let me be entirely clear as to why I say that.
No one asked you to be a farmer. No one required that you stay in the job. No one required that you impose hardship on your family to maintain your farm. All of that was done by your own choice. So, if you decided to run a failing business for 50 years, dedicating all your life to a task that provided you with no reward, and only a reason to gripe, then that was exactly what you wanted to do.
Given that you obviously presume that you will have an inheritance tax charge as a result of Labour changes, let me presume that your farm is worth more than £3 million, and might even be worth £5 million, or there would be little real reason why you are getting so upset about things.
You could, of course, at this moment sell your farm. You would, of course, have a capital gains tax bill that might come, if the farm is worth £5 million, to maybe £1 million, leaving you a clear £4 million in the bank. You could then put that in a bank deposit account and make at least 4%, and then have an income of at least £160,000 a year in your retirement, which is vastly more than the income that most people will enjoy in their lifetimes.
You are, therefore, an exceedingly rich man who chooses to produce food at a substantial loss for reasons that are hard to explain and then wishes to complain about the taxation of wealth precisely because he is by any reasonable standards a very wealthy person.
What is more, your claim that there is no money to pay the inheritance tax when in fact if you were to die and leave the farm to your children the inheritance tax bill would be no more than £400,000, leaving them a net value of £4.6 million on the basis that I have estimated, and an annual income to share of in excess of £180,000 a year.
Your claims that there is no money to pay this bill is, straightforwardly and very obviously wrong. In fact, it is worse than that. It is bogus.
And please don't tell me that you could not possibly sell. It is obvious that very many farmers are actually doing so, or the farms of the type that have been created by James Dyson would not exist.
Very politely, I suggest that you stop moaning, count your good fortune, sell up, leave someone else to worry about why your farm cannot make money, enjoy your retiremnt, and give your children a share of your quite remarkable wealth.
Richard
PS And the argument holds even if your farm is only worrth £2 million or so, given what you are telling me.
I chose not to mention Ted's persecution complex because he thinks people hate him for being rich when I am quite sure no one does, although moaning certainly won't help his cause. The politics of envy, it would seem, are all his.
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…. I would add that if he really does want to “keep it in the family” he should just give it to the kids now – I suspect that they are doing all the work anyway. As long as he lives another 7 years then it will all tax free – and that risk can be covered by a Life Insurance policy. (Yes, there are issues about him retaining benefit from the asset he has given away but easily solved).
There will be a CGT bill though….
True – forgot about that.
Ted notes that Sweden has no IHT (true)….. but I bet (although don’t know) they have CGT payable on death. Would Ted be happy to pay that instead? I doubt it.
If this is a gift of business assets, there should be CGT holdover relief.
But of course a free uplift to market value on death would be better, assuming there is no inheritance tax.
Accepted
I forgot the holdover for business assets
Well looking at the figures I think that the changes would impact a large number of farmers. Having to work out things to change the way a farm is inherited is a bit of a gamble to say the least. I would point out that the subsidies are there to provide cheaper food as consumers do not pay the amount they should. As for comparing the asset value with the average thats rather pointless. The land and other assets are used to produce food and an income its not comparable to someone with say a second home or two and a yacht.
The answer as I have stated before is to limit who can buy land and how much anyone can own either to farm on their own account or to rent out.
[On paper I am richer than most of my neighbours – but my income from the land is pretty low].
I accept your suggestion
But for reasons I note, I suspect in the end that these changes will not harm farming at all
Funnily enough what the writer has demonstrated is a strong argument against inherited farms.
What we end up with is a farming ‘Caste’ where farmers inherit their farms and carry on farming out of sheer cussedness or perceived lack of any other employable skills.
In turn that means an inward looking almost besieged profession rather than one that looks outwards.
Perhaps if we had a situation where farmers didnt inherit their farms and spent at least part of their lives doing something else – and perhaps expected to do something else, that might be no bad thing.
Thinking about it a bit more……..
Some years ago I read a book about those farmers par excellence,, the Amish.
Now they are a lot more complicated than many people think but one comment the author made was that some Amish communities end up in effect ‘under siege’ mentally not literally and I wonder if what we have is a community that feels besieged and isnt capable of looking outside its own limited box
I wonder if having wealth makes everyone who is wealthy think constantly that everyone is jealous of them? It’s a very defensive way of thinking.
I think they do
And then they project that onto others
If, as I think we all want, Labours intention is to stop rich people buying up farm land to avoid inheritance tax then surely it would have been wiser to a) consult people who really do understand farming finances and not just let the Treasury make decisions and b) focus on how to achieve that aim and not just swing a rather ineffective cudgel at farming.
Listening to various farming spokespeople it appears that the treasury has only considered APR – agricultural property relief applications and has ignored the relationship / numbers of BPR business property relief applied to farms.
I don’t profess to know or understand the complexity of farming economics but I am concerned when Labour really does not appear to have properly consulted and does not appear to properly understand the economics of farming. There also appears to have been no assessment of the impact that the changes/ confusion / mess in farming subsidy has when farmers need to be able to plan at least 2 years in advance. Add in the rise in minimum wage and NI payments that will also impact on farmers and you have another PR and real disaster that yet again Labour have created at the start of their government that will haunt them for the duration unless they reassess.
And there is the weather- not Labour’s fault obviously but many farmers are struggling still from the disaster of last years rains.
The Budget has done nothing to tackle Private Equity that has for years been buying up not just farm land but also children’s services and care homes to exploit. Where are the measures to tackle that?
And to the comment by Clive Parry that they can leave the farm and as long as they live 7 years avoid inheritance tax- not much consolation for the old farmer who does not expect to live 7 years and was unaware that he should have done this several years ago to avoid the impact of a new piece of legislation. And if the result is a capital gains tax bill – not a solution at all.
I really think you are making a fool of yourself here.
This is not a site where the inappropriate concentration of wealth in the hands of a few is encouraged. Why are you supprting that?
And as for Labour, all they got wrong was to charge the tax at 20% – it should have been at 40%.
I suggest you read what I have to say.
You have made some useful comments here. This is not one of them.
There are two problems here. The first is that the politics of change inside Britain is now virtually impossible. There are too many powerful special interests that have the capacity to make a Government pay an unacceptable political and electoral penalty in our FPTP system for implementing any real substantive political or economic change. Change is only possible if it does not affect any seriously influential special interest group. That can no longer be done, which means in effect; nothing can be done materially to change anything. Politics is now just advertising products that do not actually exist.
The second, is that farming has simply highlighted that there is a four hundred year dysfunction in Britain’s system of property ownership that has finally become economically too difficult to operate (the Byzantine operation of 7-year transfers, with a risk of not surviving, and complex tax planning is to me a demonstration of the system’s underlying intellectual inadequacy). I am neither an expert on taxation or farming, but there is an obvious and well established economic disparity between the capital value of the land as an investment in a working farm; i.e., as a working farm; and the value of the land as in investment in land, for any other purpose. Given that ‘working farming’ is so often a family, intergenerational process, the essential anomaly in the dual nature of land as an asset can only work when the two forms of valuation are in some kind of underlying harmony. This is no longer the case, and the gap between them is now exceptionally wide. Given that land and property are politically critical in multiple ways in Britain (largely, the Lockean legacy), all that is happening here is that, politically the three hundred year old chickens, long kicked down the road, are finally coming home to roost.
It seems to me that IHT was not a clever way to resolve this. Perhaps the way to solve it is through CGT, on the sale of the farm; i.e., designed as a special, higher ‘farm’ rate, where the sale is not of the land as a working farm, or the price paid is not based on an asset valuation solely of the economic productivity of a working farm.
It is another reminder that the archaism and anachronism built in to Britain’s inability even to think through the nature of its deep, and disturbing problems is simply beyond us, even to face.
The best answer is full IHT
I repeat; I have no special wisdom to offer on tax or farming (especially combined). However:
1) Mr Wills makes some telling and salient points (above).
2) People are not rational (Hume was right). Generational farming is a commitment which binds families and their attitudes, which they will determinedly defend. It is not reducible to direct economic benefit and quantification, and unreasonable to expect anything different, especially given the place of land and farming in British history. Whatever is “deserved” here, this matter requires very careful treatment. The politics will not go away.
3) I do not think it is a an effective political idea to develop a tax policy by telling people how to run their families, and require them to operate a farm primarily on efficient tax planning lines, focused on capital realisation benefits the families are not seeking (because of a land valuation problem that makes ‘working farms’ very different from conventional family businesses, and has been allowed to fester unaddressed for generations, when the disparity in valuation is now enormous); nor, frankly how they should parent (the Scottish government found itself in an unworkable political situation over something very like that, with a very high-minded attempt at legislating for vulnerable children).
4) Surely this can be handled by customised (for working farms) CGT policy, and as Andrew points out, there is already CGT holdover relief as a further ingredient for an effective model that addresses the anomalous land valuation problem? The matter can only be resolved, it seems to me when the land value is realised, by a sale of the land to a third party.
This problem is solved by reducing land values which is what a full IHT charge will do. Everything else is virtually irrelevant.
It seems to me, prima facie a rather clumsy way to achieve that outcome.
Given that caused the problem it is the obvious way to solve it
John S Warren: “…..the politics of change inside Britain is now virtually impossible. There are too many powerful special interests that have the capacity to make a Government pay an unacceptable political and electoral penalty in our FPTP system for implementing any real substantive political or economic change. Change is only possible if it does not affect any seriously influential special interest group. That can no longer be done, which means in effect; nothing can be done materially to change anything. Politics is now just advertising products that do not actually exist.”
I think this statement gets to the core of where we are now
It explains why our Govt is just doing some fiscal tinkering around the edges , instead of anything substantive. (Eg farm IHT).
Why nobody is allowed to admit that at least a £trillion of public investment in public services over the next five years is desperately needed to avert everything getting worse and worse .
Why our Govt resolutely sits on its hands while Israeli slaughter and atrocities carry on with impunity. (while fulminating loudly about Ukraine).
Why, when in 2017 a political leader started to inspire people about modest but substantial real political and economic change, he was vilified, sabotaged, and destroyed.
Can anything remedy this, do you think?
Who knows, but we have to try.
Bravo, Mr. Murphy! I quite agree with you.
Clive above mentions life insurance and, oddly enough, a landowner I know called me to request a meeting to up his whole life assurance cover (whether he will be prepared to pay the premium is another matter!). I happen to know that what he fondly calls a ‘family farm’ is no such thing and that the next generation have entirely different life choices. The land was bought more as a ‘hobby farm’ and, of course, an IHT dodge. The kids will still inherit something like £1.5m each, after taxes have been paid, so what’s not to like? He got rather cross when I said “why should you potentially pay IHT with a 50% state subsidy when the vast majority of the population would get none?”
I like your style, Mark. A lot.
As someone who occasionally buys stocks and shares, I am puzzled by a contradiction.
Today, we are told that farms and equipment are worth millions of £s.
Every other day we are told that farms are loss-making or barely profitable.
I would not pay a vast amount of money for shares in a company that barely made a profit and had barely scraped along for many years.
Why are the assets of a farm so valuable if they can only be used to barely turn a profit?
Surely a farm should be valued as a going concern? Priced on the basis of its future profits?
Please listen to today’s video and yesterday’s blog post where I explain all this
The one thing that worries me about the ‘just sell’ argument is – to whom and what happens next?
While the last set of idiots were in charge, we had word that The Minister (I’m assuming DEFRA, though there was a kind of Chatham House rules being applied) was ‘very happy about 30% churn in the farming industry’. By which we assumed they meant, 30% of small, family farmers going out of business and their farms being bought by people for whom a few million is small change. They never turn up. They contract out the farms and the small mixed farm becomes yet another part of an industrially farmed landscape where NPK/Glyphosate inputs are never queried and the biosphere dies the slow death of a thousand cuts.
I’m not saying small farmers don’t dump inputs on the land, but there’s a (slow, difficult) movement towards regeneration that they at least listen to. The big owners seem, in the end, to be wholly given to industrial mindsets that are not amenable to change.
So if we increase this sell-off and buy-up, then we’re accelerating the industrial/monocrop mindset that is destroying the land, the water and – by extension – the oceans. (See the GOES Report; the FFCC reports; all kinds of data)
So – yes, the tax stuff is a red herring. But farmers are still going out of business and the big boys are still raking in the land. There has to be a better answer to this…?
Sure
See the stuff I noted about reform of the food industry this week
Search House of Lords on this site
The biggest problem with “solving” structural issues like this is that there is a *lot* of collateral damage for the people who – for a generation now – have come to depend on the way the system works.
Yes, the subsidy system and taxation encourages some poor behaviour that damages ‘real’ farmers and reduces our food security – but if you’re going to change it, you need to do it in a way that doesn’t wipe out the few remaining family farms that are barely surviving. In our current economy no one (apart from Clarkson) is moving *into* farming.
The threefold arguments against this particular move are
1) Labour explicitly ruled out a tax grab going into the election (ho hum..)
2) There’s very little evidence it will generate any meaningful income
3) In the short term it will probably lead to further absorption of small farms into exactly the tax vehicles the government is trying to dismantle.
In principle reform is desperately needed. In practise this is bollocks.
There is no collateral damage to farmers from this
They have been made rich by a wholly unjustified tax subsidy – and I have noticed you are trolling as you have been blocked in a previous incarnation.
Mr Warren: Where were the farmers when the irrational ‘generational miners’ were being shafted?
Nowhere. I am not defending or attacking anyone. I am only interested in actual outcomes and effects. The point of my first comment was to argue Britain is almost incapable of facing any change to the status quo. My approach to this is that the farming land valuation problem (a long standing anomaly) arises only because farm land typically has an intrinsic and functionally problematic dual value that makes it difficult to compare with conventional, profit making businesses). Im my (inexpert tax) opinion, this could be done more politically effectively by imaginative use of CGT rather than IHT (because most working farms are not equivalent to most conventional businesses, but the land valuation of what farmers do is rarely based on a valuation of the economic profitability of the farm, but is based on a land valuation the working farmer will never realise, except by selling up to a non-family – third party). This can easily be fixed when the working farmer, or family sells up. CGT can handle it, and that I suspect solves the major political problem. There seems to me far less political leverage for farmers to use against CGT than IHT with this solution.
I do, however have a slight problem with the fact that commenters have a tendency to prefer to take easy moral positions on subjects; but rarely offer functional, working solutions. I do not claim to possess decisive solutions, but i do claim that concrete solutions are what actually matters.
That is what I have offered….
And what I always try to do
I think that the land value issue is the way to go.
I do not know the ins and outs of land valuation – some aspects I know from a housing development point of view. But I live in a rural area where farmers often sell land for development and it would be interesting to dig into how the land values are arrived at – what is driving the prices and whom that benefits.
I have to say though that I am very sceptical about the ability of markets to price anything properly – it seems very emotionally driven itself and easy to manipulate for the wrong reasons. ‘Social value’ goes out the window it seems.
2 more observations from me (after 15 years in farming associated work, ending 1991).
1. All the opportunities given to “the peasantry” to carry out subsistence or better than subsistence farming have gradually disappeared (actually, been stolen) for a variety of reason, but mostly involving the wealthy concentrating ownership and access to land, in their own hands and denying it to the less well off. Think of the decline of strip farming, enclosures of common land, the economic effect of sheep farming in 16th century during Reformation, rise of rich monasteries, then the Dissolution of same, and transfer of land to friends of Henry VIII (or to enemies he needed to win over). destruction of hedges due to bigger machinery only available for contractors or co-ops or huge estates, or in Scotland, the Highland clearances, and more recently, forestry (remember famous forester, Terry Wogan?) as investment (because of tax privileges!). Or in Cromwell’s time “land” was debated hotly (the Diggers, the Putney Debates). Even allotment land is under threat for building. Decline of council tenancies (land sold off to replace central gov’t support money). And now, the financialisation of farming, Clarkson (headlining the protests I see) and Dyson and emirs & sultans and of corse the Royals, the Westminsters etc.
2. Of course if these huge estates believed in small family farms, they’d be leading the way, protecting their tenants, keeping rents low, rather than taking the tenancies back when they expire. But I don’t see that happening.
3. As for subsidies – I’m out of date on that, I’m not sure GOV have really made their minds up about what to subsidise or how, after Brexit. I know Gove lied about it.
The story is the concentration of land into a few hands.
Of course they howl when IHT reform comes their way. The very rich ALWAYS howl about tax.
Stop this concentration of land OWNERSHIP. IHT will help do that.
Develop a sustainable national healthy food security policy, (urgently). Land USE, ecology, chemicals, waste, agricultural technology (some good, some awful), taxes, subsidies (not all subsidies are good ones), labour, import/export, unfair prices, monopoly markets, animal welfare, heritage, the global justice picture. All important.
Can we just forget about Clarkson and other faux here-today, gone tomorrow, headline grabbing, socially divisive, celebrity tractor drivers?
MMT teaches me that tax is about creating demand for the currency, redistribution of wealth, controlling inflation, social engineering to assist success of govt policies and reduce harmful behaviours.. These IHT plans seem to tick most of the boxes, IF they are PART of a wider set of changes in food and agriculture policy.
I think your point 2 and last para are very relevant
Of couorse despite days of blanket coverage BBC – interviewing Clarkson Loyd webber, Batters, uncle Tom Cobley and all – never really asking a single pertinent question about why farmers are getting so little for their produce, and why land values are so high and why their returns on ‘capital’ are so low.
All this as RIchard sets out – Big Food, Big Retail -Land speiculation and tax avoidance – doesntreally get a mention, except in pasing..
They dont do journalism – just let ‘opinions’ rip.
The public are thus non the wiser – other than ‘family farms are becoming extinct – thanks to Labour’.
There will be a blog on this in the morning
Good post although, I can’t see the limit of £3m being available in a lot of cases because estates worth more than £2m, including the amount that gets relief have the RNRB tapered and, unless I need correcting, the £1M allowance can’t be passed to the surviving spouse
The only way a couple could manage this is by giving away enough assets on the first death and that might present some practical hurdles especially concerning the farmhouse.
It is assumed there is a farming partnership.
Richard, it might be a partnership but how would the £3m figure be relevant if it was not referring to a husband and wife?
I interpreted this his figure as £1M each for the proposed individual exemption plus the usual £1M of allowances (£325k NRB each plus 175k each for RNRB).
You only get the NRB on estates up to £2m. This could mean a limit of 4m (2m each) with IHT paid on two lots of £500k (hence the £3M. Couples don’t realistically plan to pay IHT on the first death so it could be viewed as an effective limit of £3.5m but whichever figure you choose, its limited to farms not larger than that and it is that those farms that might find it more difficult to strip out £1.5m on the first death than a larger one unless the residence isn’t worth much compared to the farm and there is a lot of prior transferring of assets and income up to seven year before they die.
My point is that, however you view the general policy, there might be very few cases in which the £3M quoted is useable.
So?
What is your point?
The number is indicative. No one pretended otherwise. It is also amazingly (absurdly) generous.
It is also completely avoidable, as you note.
So what are you suggesting?
Tax and subsidy have hugely distorted farm economics which has cost and is costing the taxpayer and the farmer. The huge subsidies from the EU under Basic Payment provided capital for additional land, and many large farming companies today were built on this financial aid from taxpayers. Today farmers are having to do something ecological to get a pay-out. The Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme less than BPS but as if not more attractive than growing food. It also has a scheme to subsidise machinery at 40%, thus increasing demand and therefore prices. Young farmers are subsidised and elderly ones are subsidised as well. It’s the ones in the middle who complain.
The Budget has now straightened the subsidy on pickup trucks so the 4-door ones are classed as company cars.
Subsidies – maybe even including red diesel – have incentivised farmers to spend more on capital items than are necessary, buying sophisticated machinery on finance and rental schemes that are a millstone round their necks. I think it likely they need this complex kit about as much as I need the iPhone in my pocket. I use about 2% of it functions and that does me well enough. My grandfather grew 350 acres of corn with two men and two tractors, a David Brown Cropmaster (30hp) and an International 275 (40?). Today the farm is double the size and there’s a Fendt 275 and a 300HP Fastrac.
How can this mess be straightened out? New Zealand did it, ie cut farm subsidies, overnight and now sems to have recovered from the shock. Maybe this is in the back of Starmer’s mind. If so, it would be kind to tell us. Reducing and removing subsidy will lower the price of land, and Mr Dyson may need to sell a few acres. I would raise the threshold from £1 million to 5; continue the Property Relief scheme for 7 years; increase the 40% for large scale farmers — maybe 3,000 acres; encourage smallholdings of up to 25 acres (no horses! but great vegetables).
Noted
You might enjoy thes comments.
https://www.thepoke.com/2024/11/20/jeremy-clarkson-led-the-farmers-protest-and-these-17-totally-on-point-responses-surely-said-it-best/
Quite right Richard and thank you for being so forthright about this.
Land ownership is a huge problem. 17% of Land is not registered by the Land Registry and is probably inherited land that has never been bought or sold. IHT will mean more of this land becomes registered hopefully.
Half of England is owned by less than 1% of the population.
The homeowners’ share adds up to just 5%: “
Land is “a common resource that everyone depends on”: for food, homes and the natural landscapes that keep our air clean and provide fresh water. Land ownership is the key to tackling some of the most pressing issues facing us today – the housing crisis, the degradation of our natural environment and the growing inequality that is blighting society.
So yes, let’s have IHT for farmers, because I for one wish to see more land registered and for them to pay their way like the rest of us.
Thanks
Re your reply to Ted Franke.
We actually need farmers to produce our food. It’s also their way of life, so I disagree with encouraging them to sell up. Supermarkets and food producers make vast profits but don’t pay farmers enough. That’s the problem. Putting up food prices won’t help because many people can’t afford to buy food as it is.
Best he gets advice on what he could do to earn more money, eg sell direct to the public, otherwise the government should subsidise our farmers as they’re providing a national service.
Of course, due to the value of land, many farmers are asset rich but cash poor. It’s not in the national interest to force them to sell their land in order to pay tax, which apparently our government doesn’t actually need anyway.
I do agree with dissuading millionaires from buying up farmland in order to avoid tax, especially if the land isn’t then farmed.
Some sort of solution needs to be found, but we do need to produce more of our own food, for various reasons, eg food security and environmental, ie to reduce having to transport food from abroad.
I have argued in the last week for a national food strategy.
But I suggest being antigenic waste of time.
Small farmers are very often running failed businesses. Some, and maybe much other farmland should not now be farmed. It needs to be rewilded. And there would be no threat to our food supply or security as a result: we have ample ways to produce food in the UK, but let’s not pretend we have food security now, because we are a long way from it and nothing small farmers do will change that. If we want it we have to massively change our diets,
Thanks for your reply.
I live in Stroud, Gloucestershire. We have one of the very best Farmers’ Markets in the UK. Perhaps that’s the way for smaller farmers to go. Sell direct to the public and cut out the “middle man”.
Not easy if you grow barley
While it’s crucial to engage in open discussions about farming challenges, it’s equally important to focus on solutions that are practical and based on facts. Clear communication, backed by data and thoughtful analysis, can help shape policies and strategies that benefit both farmers and the environment. Dismissing critical issues without consideration only hampers progress, so it’s essential that farmers and stakeholders address matters in a constructive, informed manner for sustainable growth.