To ask why you support the farmers, regarding inheritance tax?

Can you substantiate that claim? It sounds more like the scaremongering that was on the news the other day by Farmer's daughter Rebecca Wilson. So upset that her £10m inheritance was going to be affected.

I support them.

To pay inheritance tax would in many cases mean selling off land.

The nett result is thousands and thousands of ugly ‘Lego’ houses and the consequent very real food shortages.

They really haven’t thought this through.

I'd be well up for all of that, tbh (peers out of window at slightly out of control garden alive with birds. Well, I would if it wasn't dark right now, anyway 😆)

Maybe re-scrub the bright green golf courses and bright green public parks, or your garden. To get back to 1940 biodiversity …

As pp has said, small farms are not just any business. Land sold out of farming may never return. Farming is important for us to retain some food security and to help manage land. It's also culturally important in my view. Small farms can be vulnerable even if notional land prices make them look wealthy. The IHT rise is crude. If Labour want to stop hedge funders buying land to avoid tax and pretending to farm, they can regulate land use and what constitutes 'farming'. This obligates real farmers too, as would restrictions on farm land being sold to 'developers'.

But, for diferent regulation to work, farms need to not be valued on notional land / property prices, the businesses need to be viable and there need to be many more national conversations about land use, bio-diversity, food security, access to land and how the environment outside cities is managed. Part of this is a conversation about planning, house-building and supporting infrastructure.

I used to live somewhere where the (literal) lords of the land sold dozens of farms and serious tracts of farmland in one fell swoop, evicting tenant farmers and workers, isolating other farms and natural resources, causing them to sell, destroying wildlife habitats (while pretending they weren't) with all encouragement of the regional authorities greedy for poorly-planned expansion. The produce that county was famous for is now made somewhere else. Thousands of expensive £475k - £750k) commuter houses with inadequate infrastructure stand there, pricing out local families. A crude IHT rise doesn't begin to unpick that lot.

Interesting that Jeremy Clarkson will be remembered as the guy who caused the Labour Party to impose inheritance tax on farms.
I wonder if back in the day, Clarkson ever called into HBOS complaints/customer service and got Rachel Reeves on the phone …. And now she’s getting her revenge.

And, it’s just land which may not be near your home, or your storage, or equipment. Farmer can't just build a barn or shed. Not allowed. Can NOT build your accomdation. And then if you are livestock farming … transporting, council making you your animal phosphate or whatever is limited.

Go on an agricultural land for sale website … and pretend to be a young farmer starting out and find yourself a farm. Or just some chunk of land being sold to pay tax and figure out where you will live and keep your stuff etc

Nonsense. "Scrub"- in other words brambles and young trees- is an incredibly rich habitat, especially for birds such as whitethroat. Left to its own devices it will eventually progress to closed canopy woodland. Contrast this with your average bright green "improved" field, which is largely a monoculture. Biodiversity in this country has plummeted drastically since WW2, due largely to industrial agricultural practices.

@ARealitycheck

Yes hopefully more new entrants into farming with new ideas - perhaps investing into Agri/ photovoltaics (Holland uses this technology and they are the second largest food exporter in Europe despite being a small country).

Why should only the same families be allowed to farm generation after generation? Give others a chance too!

Monsanto doesn't produce any food. What it does produce is glyphosate herbicide (Roundup), already used very widely by British farmers, both to kill off weeds at the end of the growing season, and to dry out cereal crops (which we then eat- nice). See that weirdly orange looking field? That's glyphosate.

If anyone genuinely cared about food security, they'd be kicking off about the vast acreage both here and abroad used to grow crops destined for animal feed- a massively inefficient way to feed the population, when the same land could be used for crops for direct human consumption. But they don't. Funny that 🙄

Well hopefully removing this tax break may reduce the value of farmland and take investors out of the marketplace.

Do these scores of people leaving college have the hundreds of thousands into the millions to buy the farm

and same for the tenant farmer they have got a share million in the back pocket to buy the farm

There are scores of tenant farmers desperate to own and farm land. There are scores of youngsters leaving agricultural college who would love to do the same. They cannot access this because large farms have bought up the land, and only their offspring will own it.

Stop believing the nonsense that farmers only do it for love of the land. It is just not true.

That too simplistic after what’s gone on there’s a lack of people wanting to go into farming why would you
As for next generation farmers they have to sell the farm they’ve inherited to pay IHT then use what’s left to buy a small one with massive mortgage do again why would you

Doubt People would be queuing up to buy and run farms

This keeps being said. We don't lose the land, if one farmer stops another will use it. Ensuring it is farmed appropriately and preferably by someone from a young farmer starting out is important.

Nrtt but the f we don't have farmers - we don't have food.
HTH

I wouldn't trust the NFU to have entirely unbiased figures. They are after all a union trying to improve their members position. Many of them very wealthy people.

Because we need people to.produce our food ... in our country

From the times

@LittleMG
But they can sell the farm can’t they? The farms must be worth a load of money"

"But the reality is the purchaser of this farm is unlikely to be a farmer, more likely to be a housing or commercial developer, green energy etc who would outbid an average farming family,

Taking the land out of the food production circle for good.

We're only a small island, with a lot of mouthes to feed. And it's simply not sustainable to import all our food."
@magicmee

I think a lot of tenant farmers would be very happy to buy this land if prices come down.

I don’t think people want to believe it’s not true so no point…. It’s sad

Jeremy clarkson is one person and he is quoted in the times (a reliable news source) saying he does not consider himself a farmer so let’s leave him out of this.

are the NFU and the farmers themselves who have received information from their accountants not a reliable news source?

Making the tied cottages a bit more transactional wouldn't be a bad thing. It is something Farmers are reluctant to tell the public when spouting working 25 hours a day 8 days a week for no money. Remove your house and utilities bills from your monthly expenses, and you will see a lot more in your pocket.

As others have posted this is incorrect, that's why farmers were protesting

I read the news (from reliable sources). Jeremy Clarkson was quite explicit about buying a farm to avoid inheritance tax. Apart from farmers I also think the general public worry too much about inheritance tax, the vast majority will not pay it. I think more people should pay inheritance tax even though that would include me. Services need paying for and I would prefer accumulated wealth to pay for more and hard working people on average incomes less.