But to be a teacher, you don’t need anything more than a qualification. Same as doctor, or solicitor, or many other professions. I’m not saying those qualifications aren’t hard work, and that they don’t take time, but that is ‘all’ you need. The right attitude, and the right capability, and you can do it.
To be a farmer is fundamentally different. You need land, and plenty of it. And it has to be the right land. No point growing crops on the side of a mountain. And that land needs to be in one place, accessible for the farming machinery required, or so you can easily rotate the fields your animals are on.
You need to understand your land. What works, what doesn’t, where it floods, where it doesn’t. What grows well, what doesn’t. What the soil needs. So much more. That only comes from experience. Working on your parents farm for years, learning all that you can from your parents, working every waking hour, 7days a week. Few if any holidays.
All that can only come from generational farming. Passing the land and knowledge that takes years to acquire from one generation to the next. The vast majority of farmers could not be farmers if their parents weren’t.
If you evict all the farmers that know their land because of an ill thought out IHT policy, so much knowledge will be lost. Generations of knowledge. You won’t get that back. And once that farm is sold off to building, or solar farms, or wind - the land is lost. Forever. And now we have to import even more food, adding more food miles, and increasing our food costs.
But hey. Instead of listening to the farming community, let’s lose all our farms, and then see how that works out. I mean history teaches us nothing about being cut off from food imports…. Food rationing again anyone?