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

Age UK don't think it's overblown for pensioners, citing 2.5m in hardship. Nor the reports on more pushed into poverty.

It's not hard to see why, basic pension is low and many will be on that

A lot of what you write is true. I wasn't aware of supermarkets having produce destroyed and if they were that needs stamping out, as you say there are plenty hungry people out there. As is the ability to preserve as you say.

The current issue though, seems to be that land prices have increased way beyond inflation, and like it or not, most in the know do link that to subsidy and IHT investors. Is this the right way to remove these parasites (including Dyson and Clarkson) from misusing these schemes, I don't know. But having seen the average farmer round my way. I can categorically sat poverty is not something he is suffering.

Again it’s so overblown, pensioners haven’t actually lost anything because they’ve gained more due to the triple lock and the poorest can apply for for pension credit. Pensioners are the wealthiest demographic the vast majority did not need the the WFA. They also voted Brexit and for selfish reasons and in turn shafted the rest of us!

Why can't they?

They were fine cutting the pensioners fuel allowance

I fail to have that much sympathy really, farmers by and large voted for Brexit to avoid farming tax that the EU we’re going to impose and how did that work out for them. They voted to protect their own interests but it’s the masses that have had to endure the fall out! I saw two young female farmers who protesting and actually suggested the government could cut benefits instead of taxing farmers…the entitlement is astounding!

Someone's waiting to buy the land and not grow #your# food on it .
Food security of this country is at risk.

Farmers had far more autonomy on where they could sell their produce to and for how much.
Right now they are at the mercy of supermarkets and their tendency to screw suppliers down to the last penny. The 90s was a really shit time for farmers but the government recognised the importance of food security and made changes to help farmers through.

To be fair supermarkets do this with other food suppliers, not just farmers.

This is not comparable to someone having student loans to pay back. This is food security on the line. Farmers (and it’s not just the very wealthy ones who will be affected, please stop saying this it’s just sounding like Labour bots at this stage) being landed with IHT bills will have to sell land, (it’s not a simple thing like letting people camp to make a few more pounds, diversification needs investment in order to work) that land will likely not be farmed again, directly affecting our food security.

Have a look around MN today - how many threads about Russia and the possibility of war? As an island do you not think that food security is one of the main things we need to look after? Wish Labour valued them.

Its actually scary

I remember a Christian preacher Barry Smith discussing food Control of populations in the 90s and the New world order

We should be supporting the farmers

That is indeed; the rich become richer.

Attack? Kill off?

Farmers 'need to sell their asses'? Not sure this was being asked about.......

What's the difference in inheritance tax for farm as opposed to any other family business?

They pay way more for their food, it is often locally produced and highly thought of. We do not have that culture here in the same way.

We paid way more for food, we had better access to local food we spent more on British produced food.

I support the farmers. This is just another stupid Labour culture wa. Farmers are amazing and if they are taxed into selling the land to a solar farm we will find food security will go out of the window. With the war on Europes doorstep there are a few things that seem important: food, fuel and steel security are critical. Starmer seems ri want us to be all out on collective farms though!

There are bigger issues that are industry wide.

The main issues of why farms cannot produce a good return on investment is partly down to the regulations and standards being incredibly high in the UK, partly down to sheer lack of investment for various reasons, partly down to the supermarkets middlemen buyers thrubscrewing prices, and partly due farming system breakdown in times of war and bad weather, global politics etc.

Personally I would not want standards to drop for food and its production, but it does make us uncompetitive on the global market.

We as a nation have completely sleep walked into the supermarkets holding onto our food resources and our purse strings. They control food prices, they force the destruction of crops in glut years despite there being people who go hungry in this country to control food prices, this utterly boils my blood. It is not beyond our wit to preserve food, we've been doing that since the dawn of time. Some do have farm gate sales but it's the access to customers that is the issue.

The access to market has been entirely restricted for many farms by lack of agricultural infrastructure like nearby abbatoirs and livestock markets, farm shops and many are beholden to the supermarket middleman buyers or big dairy corps for their income. It has utterly stultified the ability of farmers to improve their incomes by producing smaller and more diverse crops that would benefit everybody and help prevent whoelsale losses in times of poor weather and war. Since the 60s we've been conned into producing near monocultures, restricting the availability of foods and variety within those foods thanks to the EU vegetable lists we still have to stick to.

Smaller farms can get a bit of an edge where they have access to different markets, and have teh time and expertise to go into small scale production of speciality foods but these often have to be near urban and higher populated areas to make it fly Many farms do not have that access or time to produce.

The lack of investment is appalling. From our young farmers having few colleges to choose from to train to the access to land for new entrants and tennants. Farming incomes are often too low for real investment and again the market isn't always there. As a technologically advanced industry, we are going to lose our edge because of this. The age of the average farmer keeps increasing, this also breeds a lack of investment because the new entrants that were there just aren;t for many reasons.

Not entirely sure how you can global and weather proof farming, this has always been an issue throughout our history. However increasing our self sufficiency to around 80% again would be a start to help bolster the industry.

First though we should wrestle our markets back from the all powerful supermarket and invest in on farm production or local food processing i.e. cheese making. Just a handful of businesses control our food, this should never have been allowed but we al let that happen.

It's too big a subject really.

https://morningporridge.com/blog/nations/uk/uk-farmers-trigger-the-revolution-politely/

Lets use a multi generational farm spokesperson from tv news yesterday:

Again I suspect the general public will struggle to have sympathy with a young lady who is in line to inherit a £10m plus business. I said it earlier, but if in 100 years they were unable to make a business profitable as they claim. What the hell have they been doing.

I dont want to use other countries for food. Particularly with Putin and Biden kicking off

I want to control our food prices to some extent

I don't want cheap shit full of chemicals or meat full of crap or fed crap from the US

Farmers are not cash rich. They have expensive equipment and land but that's like a doctor giving away a hospital or his drugs. You can't have one without the other.

I want to go after Amazon and Starbucks etc not pensioners and farmers and private schools. It feels vindictive

You should listen to some of the farmers speak on this, many were interviewed at the protest. It really is a huge problem for some, they gave good reasons and not as you list here

I have no skin in the game. It’s important for food security and sustainability. It’s also important to me that the standards of farming/ growing food remain as are or improve versus being more like in the US.

I don’t not support farmers however I think this issue is so overblown it will only impact the richest and why shouldn’t they pay IT every chuffer else does and honestly you never see a poor farmer. This is another blatant attempt by the right wing media to discredit a labour government same with private schools!

Just perhaps, if the farmers didn't vote Tory over and over and they had not voted Brexit they wouldn't be in this position. In fact the decline of much of the UK went all the way back to Thatcher selling off all our state assets, now in the hands of foreign entities. The only thing that remained as a constant benefit was staying in the EU. Of course this tax was bought in to catch out the Dysons and Clarksons who have only ever bought farms as family tax dodges. Without the parasite class pushing up the price of farm land, perhaps farms will fall in monetary value and fewer farms will be affected.

There are lots of countries where farmers pay IHT- what do they eat?!

What did we eat pre 1984 when farmers were liable for IHT like everyone else?