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

Yup.

Well any business owner should be profitable enough to absorb the IHT at a lower rate than most.

Operating at a loss, I never said that?

I just pointed out that they are not employed they are business owners.

That does beg the question of why. Any business that repeatedly ran at a loss would be bust in no time.

If as the claim always is, it costs us more to produce eg milk than they get. Why do it. Why sign up to an agreement to supply eg morrisons at 'x' price unless you know it will be profitable.

Dairy cow numbers have increased by roughly 500k in 20 years. All the while dairy farmers have cried about price. Could over production play a part. How much of the circa 1m acres required for these extra cows could be repurposed for arable.

Farmers are business owners not wage earners.

I don't think the people who say we should eat less meat and drink less milk have ever thought this one through - what happens to the redundant livestock?

I was responding to you! I was not predicting a decrease in demand you were talking about the effect of a decrease in demand. Keep up!😂

Absolutely. That’s why I mentioned pasture for life. The subsidy system isn’t perfect and is dynamic but at least is now trying to address and reward good stewardship and land management.
I was farming when the IACS subsidy system was introduced which just paid by average which was totally unfair and gave no incentive whatsoever for improvement.

But you do need to throw into the mix subsidy payments. The subsidy system does need addressed with emphasis put back on good land management alongside food production to keep food affordable.

I am an ex farmer who now works in the farming industry and I do support farmers.
There are many issues at play here.
In the large majority of cases the IHT limit will be £3m and few family farms fall into that category.
I think it is a good thing to try and stop people buying land for tax avoidance and, if this does happen average land prices will fall and fewer farms will be over the IHT limit.
But the bottom line is, I think, that in this country we are used to paying very little for our food as a percentage of income. Farmers earn so little because they are generally not paid a sensible price for their products.
I know that times are hard for many but if we could just get our heads around paying a little more for home produced / organic / pasture for life foods then the farmers would earn more and be more able to (literally) weather the storms.

What makes you think demand for e.g. lamb will fall? And what of the problems of degrading the landscape, which is produced in Europe through animal husbandry? Scrub is not that attractive - and the habitats of many animals will be destroyed.

That is the point of the question I am posing, and in answering to say that we will raise fewer domestic animals shows that those who advocate this have no understanding of how the agricultural landscape of Europe is maintained and what will happen if we lower the numbers of grazing animals. The landscape e.g. of the UK is almost entirely human-made, produced from the way we raise our crops and how many animals we raise for meat, milk, leather and wool (expect clothing prices to rise). Land used for grazing e.g. sheep and cattle is unsuitable as arable land - that's why it is used for producing meat and milk. If that land is no longer needed for raising meat and milk then it will not be used to raise crops, but become fallow. Not everyone is happy at the use of agricultural land for solar panels when the UK produces only 50% of its food, either.
The landscape will also change - mostly to scrub unless it is carefully managed, which, since we will be more reliant on imports, we may not have the surplus money to do.
Briefly, to change one aspect of agriculture - lowering the number of domestic animals - has a knock-on effect on landscape and the economy generally, and this is not taken into account by those who advocate this. Besides, I don't want to eat less meat, milk, cheese, butter etc., and I doubt the majority of the population want this either.

I wasn't arguing about levels of demand or price - just that if demand falls there's an easy solution for the problem of excess animals - less breeding - I'm sure that adjustment would happen pretty quickly, if it were needed.

Spot on!

I support them because basically no farmers, no food, plus I am not a communist who is short sighted and driven by envy and malice.

I support an effort to stop IGT dodgers like Clarkson masquerading as farmers for a few years. But I'm not convinced that Labour's policy proposal achieves that without too much collateral damage.

Labour are callous and spiteful in their policy implementation when the targets are perceived to be the undeserving wealthy.

I see absolutely no reason why generational farming families that make a bare living off the land whilst helping to feed the nation should be forced to sell up to big institutional investors. That doesn't feel like it's going to result in the kind of rural Britain I want to see in the future.

I think we also need to make it much more difficult to sell of green field sites to developers. A lot of the fields around us are now housing estates (no doctors or schools or shops just houses)

Yes I agree with your thoughts. That almost they should have a guarenteed wage. At the moment profit may not cover IHT. If your profits do not cover IHT payments then what is the point of the farm? Also - for anyone say it’s only 500 - it’s 500 a year!!

labour have discussed the investment into farming but feels cart before horse - make the investment, see the results and adjust tax as appropriate.

Of course demand is still there. Prices in the shops are high even for what used to be cheap cuts and offal.

The demand is still there. Prices for lamb I get at auction are rising fast.

Absolutely this you’ve said it in a nutshell. We need more domestic produce not less! Yes I support the farmers.

As demand falls for meat less livestock are bred, sorry to state the obvious but the breeding of livestock is very much controlled by the farmer.

I don't think the people who say we should eat less meat and drink less milk have ever thought this one through - what happens to the redundant livestock? It's not going to be wandering around the countryside being happy, so we will end with less biodiversity.

Labour doesn't seem to understand that food security is important (rather like the Tories didn't understand that privatising infrastructure without a raftful of regulations stopping foreign buyers would damage the economic viability of the country).

No idea what to vote here. However, discussing this with DSS and his DP last night. The problem is that most small farmers will not have cash. They are asset rich (they own land) but cash poor. To pay the inheritance tax on a farm e.g. 'worth' 2M means the inheriting son/daughter has either to borrow money (a mortgage on the land) which is c. 800,000 on 2M, or sell some land. So either they are crippled with a mortgage or they have a less viable farm. Two ways for this to go: small farms disappear as bought up by agri-business, or large farms cease to exist and we have non-viable businesses trying to produce our food.
Labour does not seem to understand that farms are businesses and that the inheritance tax will be on capital assets that cannot viably be sold to pay the tax (most farmers don't have a Rubens sitting around they can donate to a national museum to offset tax). Labour also doesn't seem to understand that undermining farming is to undermine the economy as a whole: economies run on both first-order and second-order enterprises (sorry, forgotten the economic jargon for this system!) but, crucially, cannot run without first-order businesses - farming is a first-order business; it literally grows the raw materials the rest of us use for survival.

Exactly this.

Some very close family members are farmers (beef and lamb) and it's exactly as you describe. A lot of younger family members work for very close to peanuts because they know it's a job for life. But even then, those younger members still often have to go out and get "proper jobs", especially if they want partners and kids, just because they can't financially support them otherwise.

Farmers do an incredibly difficult and often dangerous job. One family member almost lost an entire hand in a farm accident, another was knocked unconscious by an animal and still suffers ill effects a decade later. They live in constant fear of something awful happening to one of the children, because as careful as they are, there are things you just can't predict. It is not an easy cushy job. It's hard manual graft all day every day.