To tell you how fucked UK agriculture is?

[eatsleepfarmrepeat]

God I just feel beaten this evening, I’m a farmers wife, I work in a professional role which pays well (thank god) we have two young children and I’m just DONE.

My husband is on his arse. This years harvest is so relentless, wet weather means it’s a real smash and grab operation, the heavy machines are running on wet ground and we’re just burning diesel trying to dry wet crops.

I’ve just escorted the combine from the field up to the yard (because it’s raining, again) and for about the fifth time this harvest I’ve been flashed at and given the wanker sign. I mean, I get it, it’s a big bit of kit, it takes up the whole road but honestly escorting is the only way to get them home safely and how the fuck do you get it from A to B without it going on the road? We’re not waggoning class As or having some recreational rave, we’re just making food.

We grow cereals which are either milling wheat for bread (which will be problematic this year due to the drop in proteins and the unfavourable harvest because of the weather) feed wheat for animal feed, oil seed rape for biodiesel and barley, for beer. The new green agenda means our subsidies are being replaced by taking good arable land (which makes up 24% of the country) out of production. This is why there is a shortage of eggs, the commodity price is being pushed and egg producers are not being paid the cost of production by supermarkets so they are importing, from countries which are not held to the same (necessary) animal welfare standards which the UK industry operate under.
we produce high welfare free range chickens. They retail for £10+ but our contract with supermarkets has them in at £3.24 per bird - imagine trying to operate on those margins with food and energy bills being what they are. In addition the UK market is absolutely flooded with Thai imports of cheap shit mean which again falls far below our own mandatory animal welfare standards - we just cannot compete.

ironically a lot of our feed wheat will probs go to vivirgo/e sos for energy crops. Literally thousands of litres of diesel burned producing something to go into a power plant and be sold as green energy for the lithium heavy teslas of Britain.

in the last decade we have planted 100acres of woodland, created four new wildlife ponds on the farm and drilled artichoke and wildflower shelter belts to enhance wildlife and pollinators on the farm.

I keep thinking we would be a million times happier (and better off) if we just sold out of the partnership and started again, get out of this shit, spiralling industry where the general public seem to think we’re trying to kill them and simultaneously fuck the countryside at the same time, go have a nice life where my husband isn’t hampered by stress and the never ending pressure of his arsehole father who got fat in the 70s where they used shit hot chemicals and decimated any balance of wildlife. This year is hard but with the commodity prices falling again against an increasing fuel and labour and fertiliser bill I just wonder what the fuck we are doing it for. Any trade off with the lovely holistic life the kids have is countered by stressed out parents.

we’re an island. We need food security, and we’re being paid to fallow productive acres which is already having a knock on effect to other food markets. Why are we so short sighted? We can afford to be virtuous with our farmland as a nation by offsetting but the outcome is that we’re outsourcing our footprint to these poorer nations like Thailand who are picking up our production slack and selling their chicken into our country at a criminally low value. It’s batshit.

This is a question that will probably get me being called a conspiracy theorist. But do you think cloud seeding has been going on this summer?

I would presume eg darpa, Porter down etc would have developed lots more effective methods by now.

@eatsleepfarmrepeat there is no one for my brother to pass the farm to I think it is easier for him to plan for it ending with him.

The farms in his area seem to be snapped up by corporate farmers.

You make an excellent point there. The massive tax breaks when investing in a farm along with the subsidy system have very much backfired on smaller farms.

I suspect that is why Mr Clarkson joined the likes of Mr Dyson in becoming Farmers. Good dodge round inheritance tax too.

Yes agreed, I have every sympathy for Jeremy Clarkson and his farming challenges but he has never mentioned the fact that there is no inheritance tax payable on farmland which is no doubt one of the reasons he bought it in the first place.

@eatsleepfarmrepeat

Can I ask a stupid question, I mean can, but can you help with it? :)

I live in South Yorks backing on to arable farms and buy meat/veg from the local farm. But have very little actual knowledge of farming.

I watched the Kiss the ground documentary recently and found it fascinating. Obviously that's very much based on US farming, but I was trying to understand if the green measures you mention (AB14?) is that type of thing? Meant to stop over farming?

The premise sounds great, but unworkable for farmers.

I think we could solve so much by eating seasonally and locally like we used to.

I'm attempting to educate myself. 😁

Farmers have astonishing perks as it pertains to their land. 0% IHT is just one of the perks.

Tax "exemptions" like those are one of the drivers of why the UK is collecting so little tax. Its almost £200bn in tax lost due to these exemptions (thats 20% of current public spending of £1T).

They voted this shitshow of a Govt in after being warned hundreds of times that small and medium sized scaled farming would be decimated if they did.

And here we are. You honestly cannot make it up.

At a certain point, people need to stop pointing fingers and start looking in the mirror.

Of course there's no IHT, how would farms survive otherwise, you'd have to sell up when older farmers die and hope there's someone with education or experience around to buy.

Well I guess the new farmer (likely a relative) would have to get a mortgage to cover the taxes due. Should be fine if the farm is commercially viable.

It wouldn’t because the value of land isn’t linked to what the land will produce, it’s set by what an investor will pay for it.

I.e. because IHT avoidance has driven land values through the roof, it now means that working farms couldn’t afford to pay the IHT between generations.

Nail hit squarely on the head. Farm subsidies (and other tax breaks) in their conception were aimed at ensuring we could be self sufficient for food in the case of war. Which is what the OP is on about.

Perversely, these same schemes are now the reason that land has become unsustainably valued. Funnily, when they are complaining about their lot in life. None of them seem to say lets do away with all these perks.

If by farm subsidies you mean the basic payment scheme that paid out around £80 an acre, then that is being gradually phased out and will end by 2027.

The IHT relief is one of those problems from which it's not easy to see a way back, if you reimpose it, the big land investors will pay it, or find a way to avoid it, but it will bankrupt the family farms on the death of the parents. And then their farms will be hoovered up by the big institutional investors.

Perhaps there should be a cap on the acreage that the IHT exemption applies to.

Ideally though, I'd get rid of the tax altogether. It's too dysfunctional. Instead treat inherited assets as having stayed within the family, but tax the income and any capital gains if the asset gets sold - and charge CGT at exactly the same rates and as part of the same thresholds as income tax.

So many policies are crazy, there are so many stories of farms being almost closed or in fact ending because of the TB testing and the policies around it.

With mad weather we are having farmers are having to go with larger machinery to do things like harvest in shorter windows of oppertunity. A massive machine cutting 2x as fast as the previous one halves the number of days you need to run for your farm. If you can then get contracts for other farmers fields you can then make some of the money back in it.

Thank you for a brilliant post OP. Thank you for raising awareness. People would be right behind you if the knew. Best wishes and support to you and your DH.

I think they'd be doing that in Greece and Canada where the fires are if it really works

It's no wonder farming is ducked is it?

Brexit, Therese Coffey, the Australia deal that favours their farmers over ours, CPTPP that favours loads of countries farmers over ours...

Policy after policy that screws farmers.

The whole country is DONE tbh, the politicians have no idea whatsoever about farming, they live in their own little bubbles.
There's a few farms around us that have started butchering their own meat and selling it on their doorstep. Starting veg box rounds. Starting their own 'farm shops', by having a veg stand, selling eggs, honey, milling their own flour, having bespoke enterprises.
When I was a kid, we visited the butchers, the fishmongers, the market and the 'supermarket' which back then was about the size of a local CO-OP, was the last stop for any tinned goods.
Conventional farming is a hard life, the government and supermarkets have taken any joy out of the farming way of life.
I know diversification is the way forward but what depends on what you've got to offer.
Have a look to see if there's any subsidised Training options through LANTRA, there maybe a new skill which could take you down the diversification route.
As for the idiots on the road, they'd be the first to complain if there were no bread on the shelves.

@CallumDansTransitVan

"Did you feel much sympathy for local people in Lincolnshire with low wages and high unemployment for years while the local farms employed pretty much 'slave labour' from Eastern Europe."

We've become a lazy entitled load of free loaders in this Country, why bother working, when you can live off government hand outs, most ppl don't want hard work, because that's exactly what farming is.

I had no idea how far this had gone.
I'm not in the financial situation to be picky about where my food comes from, for that I feel guilty but then I'm also angry it costs less to fly food over here than actual grow it in this country.
I shall definitely be bringing this up more in conversations to raise awareness.
I shall also write to my (Tory) mp. Not that he will care.

I remember reading Boris saying that farmers needed to diversify and do things like set up camping sites on their land to make more money - and wanting to punch him in the face.

I'm very happy to hear it.

My relations saw Patrick Minford saying in committee that after Brexit "just like coal and steel", British manufacturing and farming would no longer make sense and would cease to operate and still flipping voted for Brexit (and Boris) I suspect. (They deny it now, but they were very gung-ho about it at the time.)

And the weather's not helping is it? Last year's heatwaves followed by this year's rain. So many wasted crops.