Why Are Farmers Protesting?
Farmers are protesting again (and why I hate Countryfile) by Dan Thompson
Tractors have blocked main roads in the capital again, and this time it’s been triggered by the raise in inheritance tax on large farms. It’s fair to say the National Farmer’s Union are making a pretty big deal of it.
Infamous tax-dodger and pretend farmer Jeremy Clarkson got pulled up on this at the protest in London by a BBC interviewer who rightly claimed he was using a farm as tax avoidance. But he was right on one thing: Does this really affect that many farmers? No.
It’s long been said that the NFU is more like an association of small businesses than your classic flag-waving trade union, but hey, that’s what a farm is. The family home is part of the business, the pets are your livelihood, and the land itself was worked by your ancestors. Salt of the earth and all that.
(Disclaimer, not all farms are like this, and some are definitely factories.)
Why do we give farms tax breaks in the first place? Along with things like red diesel, the inheritance tax relief is just one of many ways we try to subsidise the cost of food, protect the creamy English countryside, and keep farming viable as a way of life in a globalised world. Agricultural subsidies used to give farmers a cash payment based on how much land they had. You could call it welfare, I suppose. “Public money for public goods” is now the mantra, whereby farmers get paid for new woodland, more biodiversity and more nature.
Another way to stay afloat was to economise. Buy up land, root up the hedgerows, buy a bigger combine harvester, and put it all on the credit card. Farms are often asset rich and cash poor. The costs are huge and the margins small, with many borrowing money to buy the land, machinery, and chemicals. In 2022/23 the average farm had debts of £294,600.
The value of that land then changes outside of their control. When the owner dies farms the business is hit with a sudden tax bill and the only way to raise, say, £20,000 at short notice might be to sell land. You could say the main reason for the inheritance tax change was to start bringing farmland onto the market for a government that wants more space for housing and clean energy projects, but that would be cynical.
Meanwhile we’ve got an environmental crisis on our hands. Biodiversity is in rapid decline and habitat loss is always the main driver. Large scale intensive farming might be the best way to grow cheap and plentiful food, but it’s the last thing an owl needs.
Have you seen Countryfile? It may be some of the most mundane hospital-ward television ostensibly about rural Britain. Most of it features drone footage of a fell or a group of academics studying moss. Wedged in between a section where Matt Baker goes on an adventure to make a Gloucestershire pizza or something there is an interesting five minute bit where Tom Heap attempts to explain something very complicated about agriculture subsidies or farmers’ mental health.
The problem is that it paints an untrue picture of the countryside in which everyone who works there is either a conservationist or sheepdog trainer, while the contentious or problematic issues are half swept under the carpet to be dealt with somewhere else in the BBC. As we can see on the streets this week there is a strong feeling by people who live and work there that what they do (grow food) is increasingly becoming impossible. NO FARMERS NO FOOD is closer to the cause of the protests than the small detail on inheritance tax.
Really this is a debate about whether we think it’s good to subsidise farming or not. If we don’t it means a future of bigger more industrialised farms, or even worse a land of hobby farmers whose main job is in accounting in the city but live in a farmhouse in the home counties, contract out all the dirty work, and go to country fairs in their equestrian gear while espousing a humble way of life.
(An interesting aside - the buzzword for struggling farmers recently has been “diversification” into making ice cream, opening wedding venues, glamping, or in other words “doing something that isn’t farming”).
Farmers in London this last week are worried about the way this is all pointing. Current food prices do not provide an income without subsidies. If farmers invest to get bigger, will they just have to sell some land to pay the tax bill anyway? If they take the subsidies and plant trees for nature instead, will they make more or less money? Maybe a better question would be “what are the NFU playing at?” or “how do I radicalise the NFU?”
What we really need is a fair price for produce, which reflects all the costs of farming in an environmentally friendly way.
While I’m in favour of closing loopholes that allow Jeremy Clarkson to hand on a bit more of his millions to his children after he dies this is miles away from a proper wealth tax.
This will keep some people happy who believe in wealth redistribution, but it really it’s nothing more than a token gesture, and one that’s caused another huge upset.
Ta
Dan Thompson, our long term volunteer cordinator and chair of Friends of Platt Field Park and general tree, growing and nature enthusiast. Blog writer and photographer.
