To support UK Farmers

[TheHateIsNotGood]

And due to KS's inability to face them in Wales today they are now thinking of going on strike. Because the govt are being too stubborn to reconsider how they apply IHT on working family farms. By all means close the loophole that allows the 'landed gentry' to take advantage of the agricultural exception but not with so blunt an instrument.

I was hoping to add a post to an existing thread but there isn't one despite it being headline news today.

With the attendant loss of jobs, and therefore an increase in the benefits bill….
Yes, sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it?

And a loss in food security as others have pointed out

The loss of jobs would be rather like what happened in the mining industry and other heavy industries which we've now outsourced. The theory is that over time we become a better-trained workforce and switch over to exporting services, not goods. We'd leave farming and manufacturing to low wage economies. But it will be a painful transition, it's true.

@AuntyBumBum we already are a services economy but why would you want to reduce food security?

Not to mention the fact that the U.K. needs more people in work, not fewer, in order to fund the benefits bill for those who genuinely need them. Unfortunately the magic money tree doesn’t exist.

It would be stupidly to rely even more on food imports

This makes us even more vulnerable

I'm concerned about 3 issues; food imports, UK jobs, and not selling any more UK land or housing to foreign investors.
If that means 'the landed gentry' continue to own and farm the land, I'm OK with that. I'm opposed to anyone turning farm land into golf courses, solar farms or housing estates.

Climate change, soil erosion, loss of land are three major challenges to farming now. Those will affect all, not just the UK. But we have a relatively stable climate (so far, nobody mention the gulf stream threat) and it would seem sensible to try to make our food production as robust and dependable as possible.

And support farmers to do that.

I find it really odd how farmers are blamed for raising the alarm on issue related to food production and security.

Maybe it's a form of denial. Rather shout at farmers than acknowledge how actually precarious our living conditions often are. Better to maintain a vague, comforting idea that if only farmers would shut up and fuck off we could all live blissfully on food produced magically out of elsewhere with no difficult balances of pests, disease, erosion, climate uncertainty, or economies to consider.

Easier to pretend its a moral issue driven by greedy rich farmers than a complicated and delicate interwoven collection of many issues - economic, social, environmental, and all dependent on people who are willing to work 12 hours a day 7 days a week?

Political short-termism - it will get us out of cost-of-living problem for now. (Similar arguments have been made about coal and steel.)

We are living in a neoliberal, globalist, hyper-individualist society.

Traditional farming doesn't fit into that mould very well at all.

Yes so do I

You'd be at the mercy of government who would decide what you can eat by deciding what imports are allowed.

I suppose we'd all be healthier if food and drink was controlled by the government as in the war which is still harked back to.

The problem is those that can't or won't cook from scratch.

I mean I can cook, but I don't know how to cook insects.

Yes I can cook too

I would rather they left the farmers alone.

I'm concerned about 3 issues; food imports, UK jobs, and not selling any more UK land or housing to foreign investors.

i agree - and foreign and uk investors will certainly buy up farmland with the view of building on it now or in the future.
It seems from this thread that quite a few posters think that because some farmers voted Brexit, they all need to be punished so making them pay inheritance tax is a good punishment - and who cares if there are negative consequences for the country.

Yes. Peculiar argument.

Agree. Such a bizarre outlook. This will impact them too

Bill Gates has the largest farm holding in the USA. Our government owns more farmland than any toff.

Let that sink in

You control food you control a population

I feel like the future vision of this government is towns as we know them interspersed by fields as they are now either covered over with ugly new housing estates (with a tiny amt of space in and between the houses so people are packed in like sardines) or mad Eds pylons and solar farms. It sounds like a hellscape to me.

It sounds like a hellscape to me.

Yes but as long as Brexit voters and poshos are punished then it’s all worth it.

According to this poll, 40% of people don't support farmers.

That is bloody weird.

But that is what the last government produced, it was ok then.

It wasn't ok,and do we need more of it

Especially when the,governments keep,bleating on about the environment

No I didn't say that, I meant the standard of new builds is such that people have no space or gardens (and pay a ridiculous amt for the privilege). Houses of the past were much more spacious, had nice gardens and weren't overlooked. But Rayner has already said this govt don't value "beauty" in housing so happy for the plebs to live like that (although not govt members themselves of course!). Anyway digressing from the topic...

IMO it’s a case of Old Labour rising like Dracula from its Undead grave, all ready to wage good old fashioned class warfare on everyone with any assets - except of course for their Labour cronies/donors with multiple buy to lets etc.

Do you really think poshos as you call them have any more idea than you.

Did you follow the climate change conference?