Do you need your parent/s to die before April 2026? *MNHQ adding content warning mentions suicide*

[Spatulation]

Absolutely reeling that we're losing the farm that my grandfather bought, my father expanded and my son hoped to takeover.

The budget today means that we'll owe £1000000 in tax and we won't be able to get a mortgage as that's 5 times our annual income and over 35000 times bigger than last year's profit.

We own soil. That's it.

Agriculture has the highest suicide rate in any profession - sadly I can see it hitting an all time high in the next 18 months. My father (83) is already talking about it.

Have you given the slightest thought to those of us who are about to lose or have lost a parent, who would given anything to have them for longer? To how it feels to read a title like this?

It’s a shit decision for the agriculture industry but there have already been some suggestions on here on how to manage it, but to say that you need your parents to die within a specific timeframe so that you can keep your land in the family is despicable.

Can your Father put it into a holding company to get round this?

Agree with this. I don't understand why a £6m+ farm is being run as an inheritable asset rather than a company.

There is a fair bit of classism in this thread rearing it's ugly head here: 'Identikit Barrett houses'
'Deliveroo deliveries'
'Sitting at their computers all day'
'We don't need ugly new builds'
'We need good quality food over housing'

You do realise that lots of people don't get a choice in that life - not everyone has the choice to work and live lives where they aren't tied to a desk. There is a generation coming up behind us who do need places to live somewhere but can't afford established homes.

I have lived rurally all my life but I wouldn't mock the people who didn't have that and don't know of rural pressures.

I am sure there is a balance but neither the Conservatives or Labour have found that.

As if this is was the chance for a nice young couple from the estate to get their little farm. No. What's going to happen is that corporations that are going to hoover up the countryside.

To be honest - it’s common sense. Any policy which drives out traditional farmers, on an island nation which is not self sustained in food - is a disaster.

Plenty of stuff to educate yourself on. Very typical of the UK though. Ignorant comments and then expecting everything handed on a plate because people can’t think for themselves. Too busy wanting to take other people’s perceived wealth. The entitlement is off the scale.

I just lost my mum and my mother in law is now dying. The thread title hasn't affected me in any way. I'm a grown adult, I'm well aware everyone is going through their own issues. I think this is a pretty big one for the op, having a very real suicidal father in his 80s due to this policy change.

Yes. Development on greenbelt, and/or overseas corps buying up the countryside.

Because the government needed to look like it was being hard on tax issues and family farms are the target.

The people on here who are saying he should pull himself together and it’s all fine…

is there anything you actually value and care about? If it’s not the environment, and it’s not food security and the nation’s ability to feed itself, preservation of wildlife species, green space for future generations, what on earth is it? Other than enjoying watching people ‘with money’ suffer?

Will you be happy when you have little choice but to eat Temu food at Harrods prices? Or you look outside the window on the train and it’s concrete and environmentally damaging solar farms instead of fields? When the country’s land is owned by Chinese oligarchs, the profits are offshored and we all work for them for cheap? Or don’t you begrudge them wealth and assets (it’s a ‘communist’ country after all). Does any of this stuff matter to you in any way?

Im pretty sure you have things to say about Thatcher and the miners… this is equally destructive (actually more so given deleterious effect it will have on the environment).

What say you about the inevitable impact this will have on the country? Beyond the few quid that she’ll rake in and immediately spunk up the wall….

Once it’s gone it’s gone for good.

Wow, people's misunderstanding of how their food is produced is mind-blowing. IHT on farms will kill off the industry leaving us dependent on important foods and gradually just paved over from north to south.

Oh get off your high horse. I’m perfectly well educated thank you, sorry I don’t know the ins and out of farming. Why don’t YOU educate us all instead of leaving catty replies

Okay, in a nutshell. Farming has low profit margins and in order to turn any profit at all you need a decent chunk of land. (For instance in rural Scotland where I am, most crofters have second jobs as crofts tend to be small so not enough income generated to support someone).
Working the land is a hard job, requires huge annual and capital investment and isn't that profitable. Given the long hours worked, most farmers earn considerably under NMW. A bad year, which outwith farmers control, can mean devastating losses. The suicide rates among farmers are high. However it's a vocation, and farms are often passed down the generations, and this then includes the deep knowledge, love and commitment to the area and to agriculture.

The inheritence tax means that when a farmer dies, their offspring will be liable for a large sum of money that they simply don't have. Yes they can sell assets like land and equipment, but that means the end of the business and the loss of another owner-operated farm.

Brilliant, thank you! See that’s all anyone else needed to do. Much more helpful isn’t it?

Thanks for sharing, I don’t disagree with your sentiments. To be honest in the near future, I think it’s more likely farms would be bought by big corporations for mass farming as opposed to being used for alternative land uses. I don’t think realistically masses of farmland would be turned into houses in the near future for example, as the infrastructure around the farms wouldn’t immediately be suitable for that.

@Imperrysmum many people have explained the issues being faced by the OP's dad and other farms. Which bit have you not understood?

If land is sold and can be used for development and cash is needed for IHT then that is what it will be sold for, so new housing development and no fields to grow crops or rear animals. So we end up importing more food. Or land could be sold to some conglomerate. Surely better to keep these family farms in tact.

Those who blame farming for environmental issues in the countryside: it's not family farms like the OP's that cause problems. It's the big faceless conglomerations - the ones that will end up buying farms that families can no longer keep - who do this. They don't care about the land, they only care about making money. They'll put some into carbon sequestration to pay their Sin Tax, probably trees that don't belong in the area and will change the ecosystem, overfarm the land until it doesn't produce any more and then sell it off to property developers.

Family farms like the OP's are custodians of the countryside. They care about the land, because polluted land doesn't produce. Their families have lived there for a long time, they care about the area. They know the people. Family farms are the lifeblood of the country, and Labour has never understood that.

I'm sorry, OP. I hope your family gets some good advice that helps. And I especially hope that Labour sees sense about this and finds a different way to deal with the actual problem they're supposedly trying to solve.

So depressing

You must be in the East rather than the North.

When did you last see a row of poly tunnels on a steep hillside???

There’s a reason why hilly areas generally farm livestock whilst flatter areas go for arable. 🙄

Yes but they'll have lost the farm they were wanting to continue to work as a family business unless they've got a spare million kicking around so that they can pay the inheritance tax and keep the farm.

@Xenia That case is fascinating.

I really feel for you @Spatulation my mum died 2 years ago, her will was subject to IHT. By the time probate granted the landscape has changed significantly meaning the property have dropped their value/market flooded due local changes but the debt I have is ever increasing. Even on a repayment plan (of cash) its effectively my whole salary before we’ve lived. Yes woe is me to
some posters, but unless I can sell things (the market isn’t moving) I am in huge debt because my parent died and no way out.

Are you being deliberately dim or was that an accident of your birth?

Remember the Covid years, no toilet paper?

Well, no farms means no beef, no ham, no wheat, no bread, no biscuits, no beer, no potatoes, no carrots, no lettuce, no onions, no lamb, no chicken, no eggs, no milk etc. etc. etc.

get it now?

This. I would say probably because of the tax advantages but that is changing and so the way you run your farm will need to change.

Farming background here and our family have already diversified with various business models to keep the land both profitable and in the family. But yes, there has been tax implications for this.

Not read through all the thread but this hits the nail on the head perfectly.

If the changes are to stop wealthy people buying land to avoid IHT, measures need to be put in place to protect farmers who work on and protect our countryside.

The UK is not at risk of losing all food production. It may lose a "traditional" form of farming where the government pays big subsidies to small farms to produce food at high costs but that's not necessarily a bad thing and it's something that the Tories have been wanting to bring about for ages (read all their comments about the benefits of leaving the CAP if you don't believe this).

Ultimately we need farmers to produce food that the public is able to afford/willing to pay for. And most of the public buy cheap food produced by agribusinesses abroad. If we want them to eat locally produced food then they're either going to have to pay a lot more for it or it will need to be produced by agribusinesses here. And there's no sign that the majority of the public can, or would chose to, pay a lot more for food.

Lost sympathy for farmers when the vast majority voted for Brexit.