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.

If they go through with taxing agricultural land the country is well and truly fucked. Farming is the key to everything, absolutely everything. It wasn’t until we learnt to farm in Neolithic times that society even began to move forward. Some of you are already complaining about food prices because you don’t have enough money for food and your week in Benidorm. Wait until food production is controlled by China because their companies have bought all the land . Famers are the backbone of every single country. It’s shame some of you are too ignorant to understand that.

We've had years of propaganda from government shitting on the 'undeserving poor'.

Now we are having years of propaganda from government thats going to shit on every kind of small business owner you can imagine.

Meanwhile those multinationals and investment banker are laughing their fucking socks off at the muppets who fall for the divide and conquer shite that leaves 'normal people' screwed in the long term.

Well farming sounds great according to you!! Loads of money, expensive cars. So why aren’t you doing it then if you want these things and think others should have them?

But that is already what happens. They are brought because it is a way to shelter money from IHT. The sellers are the kids of farmers who inherited the farm tax free then took out the millions.

I don’t agree with selling off council owned or tenanted farms. Farming should be something that people can get into without it being inherited.

To be honest this thread is eye opening and not in a good way.

I learnt about these things at school in geography and history back in the 80s.

How anyone can think attacking food production is a good idea is beyond me.

Seriously it will impact everyone. Food prices will rise again. Environmental damage. If you live in the South and you are used to conglomerates then listen to people on this thread and realise that if you enjoy British lamb (for example) to are destroying it's production.

And as RedToothBrush says the investment bankers will be rubbing their hands in glee.

I’m from farming stock on both sides of my family and damn proud of my 81 year old father who continues to farm full time while the townies on here can’t seem to manage to work past 55. How pathetic!
I arrived home late last night and husband was out early this morning so we haven’t discussed this yet . In NI the price of land per acre is extortionate. 30 acres sold beside us for £20k an acre. Land near my family farm sold for £32k an acre. Taxing agricultural land will have huge consequences on the landscape of our nation. I don’t want the land to be owned by foreign companies. What a disaster that would be!

So you can judge that James O’Brien doesn’t know anything without actually listening to the program that he actually fact checked on.
you are also wrong as well because as he said he’s happy to pay the VAT he’s got kids in private school. The truth is just because he is on the left doesn’t mean to say he necessarily supports everything but does so actually you’re wrong. They just seems to be so many conservative people on this post that it doesn’t matter what labour have done they won’t like it.

Exactly the same as VAT on school fees. All the actually rich parents that I know paid years in advance before the election. The rest of us who pay out of income will have to suck it up but at least some people think they got one over on the “rich”. It seems to be a tactic of this Government. Stop “rich” pensioners getting the winter fuel allowance. Well, my dad with a total income of £13,500 and £400 in savings will not longer get it. But he’s rich isn’t he!

I'd rather reduce the number of politicians, than the number of farmers who actually produce food for us all to eat !!

OP, farmer here and can you please reassure your father that we have lived through good years and lean years but managed to somehow get through them.
Nothing has been absolutely set in stone yet and no doubt there will be huge debates (possible protests?) so please ask him to reflect on the good things he got from the land. His knowledge and experience are invaluable.
That said, there are many rural mental health support services staffed by people from farming backgrounds.

For what it is worth, our farm comes under the smaller (acreage) family farm and I think it is so important for people to realise the different types of farm, from self supporting small holdings, crofting, tenant farmers, small family farms up to huge estates.

I would also ask that you all take a look at the major supermarkets as they tend to dictate prices and they are the ones taking the profits. Farms used to thrive, a profit could be made but not now. Many live below the poverty line and there isn’t a basic low wage on many family farms as you don’t get paid. Mortgages can be multi generational, usually three generations.

It is hard, physically, tough emotionally, socially isolated too yet we do what we can to make sure anything leaving the farm is of excellent quality. It is our vocation and life. Multiple skills utilised.

To OP’s father - hold on lad, it might get rough but we are a tough lot. You are not alone and we respect your wisdom and experience. We will fight this problem with all our strength.

What an ugly, unempathetic post. A suicidal person is a suicidal person, regardless of wealth or background.

Yes .
But farming is hard to get in to , because farmers don't want to sell their land ,they want to pass it down to the next generation.
This way ,smaller farmers can set up if a 6th of your land becomes available to be bought .it means another family can now make a living on the land .

And other businesses aren’t protected in the same way as farming because they simply aren’t REMOTELY near as important as protecting how we grow food and support ourselves . Relying on foreign imports for food is nonsense. The Second World War wasn’t that long ago and it took a lot of preparation to get us even remotely self sufficient in food product . Can you imagine what could happen if we relied on other countries for ALL our food? We’d be fucked.

FUCKING HELL YOU LOT the ignorance shown by some of you is utterly embarrassing. I'll try and break it down.

1. We need people to grow and farm food for our own countries, can we all agree on that as a common starting point? Because if we don't then we as a country/kingdom are insanely vulnerable. To extortion, to our basic food being witheld for political reasons, to weather, to other countries' economic mismanagement, to wars overseas (remember the effect of the Ukraine war meaning that suddenly there was no sunflower oil and the price of many goods that used it shot up? That, but for ALL of our food. And notice how Israel has been blocking vital supplies for survival arriving to Gaza? Did you learn about WW2 rationing and why the dig for victory campaign was so important in WW2 (a time when we had far more farms in the UK than we do now)? Can you see why we need to protect our ability to make our own food? We'd also fuck our carbon emissions up even more. We'd also rely on countries being nice enough to supply food without all of the harmful carcinogenic ingredients that are legal in some other countries. And so many more reasons. We. Need. Home. Farming.

2. There are family farms and there are huge conglomerates which have factory farming arms. Maybe some of the latter would buy up the family farms that need to be sold, if they can amalgamate them with neighbouring land. In which case we can look forward to falling lifestock welfare, devastation of wildlife habitat, and the ticking time bomb of land managed for short term profitability not long term sustainability. They wouldn't want your (processed, therefore safe) sewerage to spread on the land to enrich it, they want the cheap chemical fertilizers, which are good for circa 10 years but strip the soil of all it's structure and nutrients long term making land infertile. So the goverment will probably continue the Tories policy of pumping untreated sewerage into the sea, so yay for continuing to kill off biodiversity in the seas AND on land, it's a 2 for 1 deal! They also won't want the poo that livestock produce in order to rot it and return it to the land either, and in all honesty fuck knows what they're going to do with that - ship it to china at great cost which they'll pass on to the consumer, no doubt.

3. What's more likely though is that the farming land will be sold off for housing developments. We do need more housing, but with less and less home produced goods we're more and more vulnerable. We already rely on supplementing home grown with imports to feed our population. Making it less home grown and more imported is a fucking stupid idea - see point 1.

4. I'm going to shout this one loudly for those at the back: FARMS ARE ASSET RICH AND PROFIT POOR. That £6,000,000 farm house and land is producing income below minimum wage for 4 people. It's not because they are mis-managing their land, it's the reality of farm income. We want British Milk but we don't want to pay much for it. We want lamb for our Sunday roast, but we don't see that some years farmers make a loss on their lambs because of the reality of livestock pricing markets. We want our pumpkins to carve, but we don't see the gaping holes in the farm's accounts because their pumpkin or sunflower crop failed this year. Farming is tough work every day in all weathers for not much money and a shit ton of stress.

The benefits to this country of having our own farms are not how much profit they make - the benefits are that we have food production with low carbon footprint in a sustainable way and at least some resilience to international forces. See point 1 again. And guess what - they can't produce that food if they have to sell off those assets.

This budget decision WILL kill off more of our farms, and leave us with lower welfare animal products, either due to factory farming in the UK or the need to import it from countries with lower welfare requirements. It is SUCH a shit move for this country, apparently aimed at closing the loopholes that enable a few rich folk to avoid paying inheritance tax, when in reality it's going to hit farming families, which is NOT the same demographic.

I'm not from a farming family (I just know the countryside better than some of you), and I am a Labour voter. It's a fucking devastating move for our country's future, but one which the full effects of won't be felt by the country within the next 5 or even 10 years, and will be easily denied because there will be too many other factors to be able to pinpoint this one with certainty, and even if they do by the time it's felt we will have a different party or at least different people in charge who can blame past politicians who will be retired on their comfortable pensions by then.

I know right. Not taking into account that farmers work 365 days a year in physically demanding jobs that are exhausting mentally, physically and emotionally.

Want to be farmers can’t even rent tenant farms! How do you think they will finance land? They won’t.

This way ,smaller farmers can set up if a 6th of your land becomes available to be bought .it means another family can now make a living on the land .

They won't make a living on a 6th of the land. The reality is they'll be up at 4am to work the farm before buggering off to do their second jobs, because it's not large enough to be profitable.

You’re just making stuff up now.

Farmers need 4 x 4s. Would you prefer it if they bought an additional smaller car to use on the school run, just to keep you happy.

If people on £400 uc had the same work ethic as farmers they’d get off their arse and do something about their crappy £400 a month. What an ignorant comment. I’m poor and lazy so let’s take everything off the families who have made sacrifices for generations to keep their family farm in the family.

I turned it on for 5 mins and had to turn it off. JOB is a mansplaining twat of a man who enjoys belittling anyone who rings in who may have a differing point of view. I’m all for a debate but the Tories are not in power, BoJo is long gone and Brexit did happen - yet he’s still behaving on every phone-in of his that I’ve accidentally listened to as if this is not the case. He’s not an expert in everything but for some reason thinks he is. I’d pay no attention to anything he says tbh.

It isn't as easy as that. Where exactly is he going to live? He can't stay in the house if he does this since it then becomes a gift with reservation.

How much of a living do you think a new farming family will be able to make on 1/6th of the land that previously only just about managed to sustain one farming family?

Excellent post.

Point 1 is the key. I can't believe the government are so stupid.

I really can't.

Exactly - I havnt exactly seen queues of people lining up to be farmers