War, farming and food supply

Ah bummer, I still don't have answer to my question, which is

What was the tax relief situation for farmland being passed down before [the IHT relief introduced in early 1990s]? How did farms avoid having to be sold or broken up then [due to their tax bills]?

Is OP saying the inheritance tax change in 2025 is not a concern to her after all? Confused.

Yes, I'm quoting the first page and haven't yet got any further, but I find statements like this moronic. Yes, we are squashed. An enormous proportion of the UK is not suitable to be built on or to live on. There are uplands, moors, river floodplains, coastal floodplains, forests (we need them), farmland (ditto). In fact we need all of them.

Yes only a small proportion of the UK is built on, for good reason. Humans are not the only things that live on our islands.

The VAT is almost a side issue IMHO. Locally to us, since Labour announced house building targets there are literally thousands of houses in the process of planning, all in the last few months, either already granted, or being brought to planning. Some are in the local town on brownfield, hurrah, a huge number are on productive farm land, recently farmed for wheat and rape, grazing land for sheep. Oh, and let's not forget the huge solar farm, also on farmland.

Once it's gone, it's gone.

Hey OP : thanks for sticking with the thread. I very much want an answer to first question below.

I think most of your posts have as motivation the change in inheritance tax (Labour introduced recently) that means farms could get a big tax bill when passed to next generation. Really sorry if you already answered this and I missed it, long thread.

My question:
The agricultural tax relief being taken away was only introduced in about 1992. What was the tax relief situation for farmland being passed down before that? How did farms avoid having to be sold or broken up then?

Bonus question:
How do you feel about people like Jeremy Clarkson using agricultural land as a tax shelter for their kids? Which was reason for his original investment, regardless of his farmer conversion since. Do you blame people like JC for driving up price of agric land?

To the OP, there is a government policy paper setting out this government's food strategy www.gov.uk/government/publications/a-uk-government-food-strategy-for-england/a-uk-government-food-strategy-for-england-considering-the-wider-uk-food-system

None of which is wrong.

However no matter how right you are, it is physically impossible for the UK to become self sufficient in food. And anyone who pretends otherwise is up to a grift.

If we had only just stopped being self sufficient - say 10, 15 years ago - then yes. Go for it.

But it's not 10,15 years. It's 200 years. It would take decades to reverse that with a wartime style application for every single day of it. Forget conscripting soldiers, you'd need an army of labour for farming. Even with tractors and machines.

I can't make it any clearer. "Food security" is not a synonym for "100% food self sufficiency", even if the reverse is true.

Very few nations are completely self sufficient in food. And frankly I'm not sure I'd like to live in the ones that are.

As someone brought up on a family farm (not a huge agri-business) - being a small farmer isn’t like other jobs. You’d never get people to put in the hours and commitment all round the clock that farmers have to for the money they earn. Please don’t make the mistake of thinking all farms are like the vast rolling acres you see in E Anglia, some parts of the Cotswolds or Wiltshire. Many are clinging on by their fingernails, especially in upland areas.

Owning the farm is the only real motivator - if you didn’t, you’d just pack up and get a job with better conditions and pay. Farmers have often inherited their land from several previous generations and feel a strong bond to it. It’s hard to explain but it’s not just about money. Land needs nurturing for the future, not just exploiting, and if you own it you’ll take care of it.

France, for eg, absolutely prioritises its small family farmers because it values their role in vital food production. I’m concerned about some utterances and policies from the government which imply that they see these farms as highly dispensable. I’m no Clarkson fan (I’m really not!) but even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

With the sums you gave out earlier, there's ways round it with decent tax planning

Gift the farm to children while you're still young and fit. Obviously sudden unexpected death negates this

Put the farm in a trust

If you can't do this, then it's quite common to take out a loan to pay off an inheritance tax bill

There should be no bankruptcy

Sorry, just to correct myself, the 25% relief came in 1925, so between the wars

Full self sufficiency in food would be extremely damaging for the economy.

If you stop importing food, you're likely to lose export markets too

Farming is far less financially productive than the services industry, to have enough farm workers, you would need to pull people from the services industry, cutting GDP

Imported food is often cheaper due to different climates

Essentially it's impossible, it's been impossible for 200 years or so. Successive governments have accepted this as a trade of in becoming an industrial and post-industrial economy.

What OP is doing is using this historic lack of self sufficiency to attack the government over it's tax changes to inheritance tax.

A tax that was in place since 1894, and where farms had a 25% relief during the two world wars. If inheritance tax was so damaging to farming, then the government would have suspended it for farms during the world wars. It wasn't set to 100% relief until 1981 for owner occupied farms

First thing farmers need to do is to actually grow things people will eat, or can eat. A lot of our wheat is grown for beer. And a lot of the root crops are grown to feed to animals. So farmers would have to fundamentally change what they grow.

Supermarkets would have to accept veg whatever size or shape. We would have to eat in season. This would mean no fruit most of the year, unless you knew how to grow / store your own

Anyone with a garden should stick in some apple trees and get a veg patch growing.

You’re wrong! The government care enough to just keep everyone ticking over to avoid full out riots. Hence farming being heavily subsidied for years.
The government assume they will be able to continue to import cheap food to feed everyone. Which is great until it isn’t possible!
Farming and food production should be the number one priority imo.

Plus, if you compare to the Second World War, most homes in the UK had coal fires (no central heating) and people would just heat ine room and basically wrap up warm, taking hot water bottles to bed.

Can you imagine people now being told “You can’t wear that sexy vest top - you need 2 thick jumpers and no heating!”

Plus people would want their Chilean sea bass and Kenyan asparagus. Fuel rationing would be a nightmare since there are so many cars and our lives are based around road transport

There is no contingency plan around food. Our food supply is massively at risk, it is being called out and ignored by academics and food chain experts who are asking for contingency plans. Food companies are huge powerful global investment companies, bigger than government. They are killing our rivers, selling us food that has no nutritional value and is in turn killing the planet. The OP is right to be worried. So many things outside of war can disrupt the food chain. We rely too much on supermarkets and they have no magic solutions. There have been many occasions where our supermarket shelves have been very sparse with no fruit or veg over the last few years & weather changes have meant farmers have lost crops or had to replant repeatedly in the UK.

Hmmmm, I can see how my comments might come across as a little patronising. However, I find the idea of a straightforward right/ wrong answer a little naive.

I mean - it's clearly wrong for some people who had hoped to continue using this tax loophole.

It's right for all those who are currently unable to use this particular tax loophole to evade inheritance tax. Why should there be one rule for everyone else and one for farmers.

Its rich to say that I don't have a point when you've dodged every point I've made anyway and not directly addressed them. You've instead misconstrued them to grind your own axe against the government. Whilst sophistry might work in law, its hardly going to win hearts and minds. Nor is presenting Jeremy Clarkson as the poster child of the campaign, a man who has openly stated he wants to use this to pass his wealth onto his descendants tax free. 🙄

No this isn’t right. It’s easy to see why Labour’s policy isn’t good for anyone.

You know that psychological thing where people live in different realities - this is how I feel reading your replies.

You're determined to be 100% right, and its slanted. But then again, maybe I am on the other extreme.

No-one said Labour needed Clarkson to make this tax dodge visible to the experts. But he made it front page news and he has made a fortune out of his TV programme, flashing it up to millions of voters. He is now spearheading the campaign , which reinforces the idea that this is a corrupt secret of the privileged elite, who have avoided death duties since the time of William the Conqueror. Everyone else pays inheritance tax, why shouldn't they?

I suspect you are personally affected, amd so I feel very sad for you if this is a legitimate grievance, rather than the empty bleating over the private school VAT.

I think its called cognitive dissonance, where by arguing such a blinkered position, you in fact alienate people and reinforce their opposite opinion. The country will not collapse, but if this has impacted you, I take no delight in that.

But blame Clarkson and his ilk, not the government.