Far right attempting to subvert the farmers protests in London.

“10 million quid to buy business that might net you 50k in profit a year”

As I already said, it just makes no sense at all for anyone to keep a business that runs on this basis. Sell it, retire, live a comfortable debt-free and work-free life. You could even volunteer to keep yourself busy, but don’t make yourself out to be some sort of martyr. I mean, I don’t have anywhere close to 10 million quid and I’m not working. I only kept on going for as long as I did because I genuinely enjoyed it, I never claimed to be slaving away for poverty wages and there weren’t people queueing up to pay me millions to stop.

Isn’t there a bit of a circular argument going on with the land valuation?

The land is clearly not worth that as farmland in many cases, at least not in terms of income generation, but worth it if placed on the open market, perhaps for housing or other purposes.

Why can’t covenants be attached to land passed from parent to child that if that enhanced value is ever realised (say you sell off a field for a new estate, or if the ‘investor’, or ‘investor’s beneficiary, who is holding farmland to avoid IHT wants to liquidate that investment), then the Treasury gets its slice at that point?

I struggle to understand how the lefty  greens who make up the majority of people here ( Or to be fair, this is how it seems) can separate the eco issues with hammering farming. Harm our farmers and we make the world worse.  Of course many here feel that as they don’t have something the owners of what they want need a good verbal pasting. We need to protect our food producing industry in everyway possible. Lets double tax leisure cycling and reduce agricultural taxes by the same amount. Far more valuable. And Moral

I think supermarkets driving prices down when buying from farmers is also a problem, but it gets more complicated – Imagine the issues if things like milk went up to £2 a litre in the shops?

The supermarkets won’t swallow the cost, they have shareholders to satisfy and bonuses to pay.

I used to work for a company selling a product with ongoing support contracts for said product, to retailers including large supermarkets (not food, but that’s not really relevent)…  Our senior account manager was bidding on a tesco contract, and was just totally exasperated by it, he said they were total ball busters on price, T&C’s, attitude etc, and said he really didn’t want to do business with them as he knew they would be nothing but a problem… very difficult to deal with, find excuses to pay late or argue for discounts, etc. it was a big money contract, but he was questioning whether the profit would be worth the manpower costs and effort in dealing with them.

So it’s really a much bigger issue than just farmers.

I struggle to understand how the lefty greens who make up the majority of people here ( Or to be fair, this is how it seems) can separate the eco issues with hammering farming.

As others have pointed out, there is nothing green about modern farming.

I also don’t see why people inheriting millions of pounds shouldn’t pay IHT.

 They see themselves as doing a vocation and custodians of the land, its been handed down through generations.

Presumably they could move the land into a trust, protecting it from IHT and for future generations… but not passing on their wealth directly to their children.  From what I have seen round here the real value of the land comes when a property developer buys it up and builds a load of houses on it.

 Sell it, retire, live a comfortable debt-free and work-free life.

So what happens to the land next? Do we just get all our food from other countries? If it’s just sold on to a bigger company employing someone to farm, the bigger company will be looking to cost cut to maximise profit (monocultures, over-fertilising, lower animal welfare, re-development away from farming), and the person employed to actually farm it will have much less skin in the game to care for animals or land. Race to the bottom at that point. There is value in owner-operator in terms of food quality and land management.

FWIW I agree it seems an obvious personal choice, but it’s not great for the rest of us

The idea farmers protect the land is laughable, the idea you can fertilise the land appropriately which chemical fertiliser is also a joke.

I hope no one is looking at Zimbabwe as a way of redistributing the farms for the greater good….

No because Britain stitched up Zimbabwe and didn’t fulfill its obligations under the Lancaster House agreement, since we are talking about far-right racists and farming. Britain wasn’t prepared to grant independence to Zimbabwe unless the interests of a tiny minority of white European colonialists were protected. It made all sorts of commitments with regards to providing financial support for the orderly transfer of land ownership away from the white elite (0.6% of the population owed the majority of the land) but that didn’t materialise.

Britain could have helped not just financially but in terms of training and education for a majority owned agricultural sector, Britain did after all extract plenty of “blood and diamonds” out of that region thanks in a large part to the brutality of Cecil Rhodes. But instead British governments washed their hands helping to create the conditions for a corrupt regime to grab land and establish new ownership without any sort of practical plan.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/jan/16/zimbabwe.chrismcgreal

Margaret Thatcher’s government was largely interested in protecting the property rights of the white minority.

“A future government would be able to appeal to the international community for help in funding acquisition of land for agricultural settlement,” he said. The liberation delegation was eventually persuaded. 

Yet after 20 years of Mugabe’s rule – until the “war veterans” began seizing land two years ago – the picture was not hugely different. Just 6,000 white farmers occupied half of Zimbabwe’s 81m acres of arable land. About 850,000 black farmers were crammed into the rest. Since independence, only 10% of arable land has moved legally from white to black hands.

Harm our farmers and we make the world worse.

Do we? How?

Do we? How?

Too many bees about.

Do people know so little about where their food really comes from? Just on this page:

We need to protect our food producing industry in everyway possible.

Do we just get all our food from other countries?

Presumably they could move the land into a trust, protecting it from IHT and for future generations…

You’ll have a big tax bill, every 6 (I think, could be wrong) years or so. Which is why many don’t. Theres two trusts in my area (I rent my home and business from one), one is a huge farm with multiple properties (that once would have been for the ‘workers’). The other is a small farm, the farmer has no wife or kids so runs it as a trust with his sister.

Neither are what I’d call poor.

The supermarkets won’t swallow the cost, they have shareholders to satisfy and bonuses to pay.

A key factor in my wife’s friend closing the family farm. Said she’d sooner supply McDonald’s than Tesco in terms of price and animal welfare.

As for the “1000 years” as pointed out above, these exemptions came in under Thatcher. Plenty of estates were split and/or sold off for death duties in the 1970s, when they began to convert to trusts – looking at you, Chatsworth.

Said she’d sooner supply McDonald’s than Tesco in terms of price and animal welfare.

And that’s their choice, no one is forcing any business to sell to anyone they don’t want to deal with.

And that’s their choice, no one is forcing any business to sell to anyone they don’t want to deal with.

Absolutely. Her choice was to stop farming – barns converted to housing, land rented/sold to neighbours.

Our senior account manager was bidding on a tesco contract, and was just totally exasperated by it, he said they were total ball busters on price, T&C’s, attitude etc,

I once worked for a company that was quoting to clean their car parks. They wanted a cost per store, fine. But they wanted the cost splitting down further, to per parking space.

‘Do you have the details of how many spaces per store?’

‘No’

’Can you get that information?’

’No’

The sales admin team had to count them, using Google earth

We need to protect our food producing industry in everyway possible.

TBF I’d be more interested in protecting them if they actually made food 

Agricultural Property Relief was introduced in 1984 because that was when Inheritance Tax was introduced, there were reliefs under the Capital Transfer Tax, its predecessor.  I think it might have been said already but other family businesses can be passed down free of inheritance tax because of Business Property Relief.  The tax expert interviewed by the Rest is Money is a lawyer, I have used many tax lawyers over the years and my experience is that doing numbers isn’t a core competence.

“Why can’t covenants be attached to land passed from parent to child that if that enhanced value is ever realised (say you sell off a field for a new estate, or if the ‘investor’, or ‘investor’s beneficiary, who is holding farmland to avoid IHT wants to liquidate that investment), then the Treasury gets its slice at that point?”

They could be (lots of forest parcels are so covenanted) but obviously none of the famers want to render their land worthless!

They are not planning on mucking about!

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As for the “1000 years” as pointed out above

Most of them also acquired their land rather later in the early modern and beginning of the modern period when the common land got enclosed.

Plenty of estates were split and/or sold off for death duties in the 1970s,

Although quite a few got to use national land fund and other measures where the repurposed National Trust (always fun seeing the nutters shout and rave about how the NT should stick to looking after stately homes when that wasnt its original purpose) was used so the families could continue to live in their stately homes whilst avoiding inheritance tax etc.

Perhaps you would like to consider the view of a Cumbria hill farmer who is not an owner of huge tracts of fertile arable land and has spent years transforming his farming into a more ecological system.

James Rebanks here 

@herdyshepherd1 on X.

Do the new tax break rules for farmers affect him more negatively than the old ones? Do they make it harder for him to do his work? Do they make it less likely that his work will carry on in some form after he is gone?

“Just for clarity… our farm value is under the IHT threshold and we aren’t wealthy in other ways… So I’m not a wealthy tax dodger I’m protesting because I think major progressive promises to farmers are being broken and this budget was the last (not the first act) in the play”

https://x.com/herdyshepherd1/status/1858497079011652061

I heard that it was unwise to hand down to your 35 year old child at when you’re 65 because there’s a chance they could get divorced,

Whereupon as it was an inheritance it wouldn’t be included in any division of assets. If they subsequently marry it can be included as a prenup.

So I’m not a wealthy tax dodger I’m protesting because…

… it’s surprisingly easy to get normal people to cheer on tax advantages for the very rich, if you can encourage some kind of fake joint identity.

If the tax changes have been designed not to hit the normal farmer, but start to redress some of the long standing baked in inherited wealth and inequality in the UK, while also preventing rich entrants to farming to use land as a wealth bank yet avoid wealth taxes such as inheritance tax… perhaps a better response would be to welcome the changes and argue for other help for real farmers doing everything they can to make a living out of farming.

I’m surprised it’s as high as 15p in the £1 goes to the grower. The article makes for an eloquent read but anything that is money from taxpayers to a business is either a contract to provide something or a subsidy. If it’s the former and it costs more to do than you are paid then stop doing it. It’s an optional scheme. A contract with payments for delivery. I still don’t understand why farmers think they are special. The world has moved on since the end of ww2

perhaps a better response would be to welcome the changes and argue for other help for real farmers doing everything they can to make a living out of farming.

As you will have read in the article he is concerned not so much by the taxation implications of recent governments’ announcements but by their inability to deliver on schemes and promises.

recent governments’ announcements but by their inability to deliver on schemes and promises.

Would that have anything to do with the loss of EU money since brexit? [insert smileyBruceForsythe.jpg]

double post – ignore

Let’s assume farming should continue. Who should do it? Which model is going to best deliver on the things people in this thread care about?

1. Owning farmer

2. Tenant farmer

3. Companies i.e. agribusiness

4. Citizen collectives

5. Public sector and their subcontractors

Ignore  – wrong thread

Farmer on Radio  2 today ” i only make 12k a year” from a £10 million pound Farm… what the Farmer meant was after all my subsistence Costs (home vehicles all bills) I only made £12k disposable. I live among them and they still buy land at more than £10k an acre then stand in the pub and moan they can’t make it pay….. full of manure.

Farmer on Radio  2 today ” i only make 12k a year” from a £10 million pound Farm… what the Farmer meant was after all my subsistence Costs (home vehicles all bills) I only made £12k disposable. I live among them and they still buy land at more than £10k an acre then stand in the pub and moan they can’t make it pay….. full of manure.

I thought STW was full of socialists? They see themselves as doing a vocation and custodians of the land, its been handed down through generations.

I don’t mean to be rude, but that isn’t socialism.

Amazing how the farmers have suddenly decided that it’s all gone to shit and they have to march on London after a few weeks of a Labour govt, when they were fine with it for a decade of Tory Brexit swivel-eyed lunacy.

@snotrag Ha. Did wonder if someone would share Sky News ‘take’ on the story that landed in the middle of my brothers shift! Ironically, he used to be a farmer before he became a news anchor!

Farmer on Radio 4 claiming that land value is through the roof.

Well sell some and pay your bill.

Claiming a return of 0.5% on farm value.Then the business model is broken. No other business asset can return so little and be viable.