Bye bye Starmer

[GG.]

If you class a farm that doesn't make much money as a "hobby farm" then most will fall into that category where they're not owned by big business. I think that's what the farmers are all taking issue with.

Harry clearly had other business interests which he has only obliquely referenced - I agree if he has used other sources of funding to part fund the purchase of the existing farm then, yes he has one toe on the scale on sheltering wealth (for whatever proportion he equity funded) but that is part of the problem as I say because you wouldn't want people like Harry just jacking it in altogether. Maybe if that farm was taken up by a younger farmer to run it but that is far from guaranteed - plus you take Harry's years of experience out of being economically useful (which is already happening with the silly eco subsidies the previous Tory government pushed like crazy).

If you talk about people that own farms and tenant them out that is an easier argument, but as we discussed before - there is already a seven year lookback for that apparently.

[mik]

I think you've fallen into the trap of looking at this as personal taxation issue solely rather than supporting farming as a concept

Not making any reference to Jobbo - I think this is my issue with the whole thing. I don't really understand why farming has to be supported as a concept, and - if it must be - doing so via removal of any IHT burden (in 1984) seems a pretty bizarre way to offer that support (to me). So farmers benefit, but the bloke that owns a business to sell them farm equipment doesn't. Nor the lady who owns a business that maintains that specialist agricultural equipment. Nor the vets that specialise in livestock etc etc.

If you want farming to be an attractive proposition to the next generation - help to ensure that farms can generate reasonable and scaleable profit. The next generation may then want to take over? Or maybe they don't - and someone with the drive and skills to do a better job can step in and take over?

[GG.]

I think you've fallen into the trap of looking at this as personal taxation issue solely rather than supporting farming as a concept

Not making any reference to Jobbo - I think this is my issue with the whole thing. I don't really understand why farming has to be supported as a concept, and - if it must be - doing so via removal of any IHT burden (in 1984) seems a pretty bizarre way to offer that support (to me). So farmers benefit, but the bloke that owns a business to sell them farm equipment doesn't. Nor the lady who owns a business that maintains that specialist agricultural equipment. Nor the vets that specialise in livestock etc etc.

If you want farming to be an attractive proposition to the next generation - help to ensure that farms can generate reasonable and scaleable profit. The next generation may then want to take over? Or maybe they don't - and someone with the drive and skills to do a better job can step in and take over?

This is an age old problem. For things which are marginally profitable with enormous overseas competition, if there is merit doing it locally (from the perspective of food security, emissions, traceability, etc.) then support generally has to be given. I think most people agree that there is benefit in not importing an ever greater proportion of our food and the situation in recent years with horse meat in burgers and the Ukraine war affecting various farm products served to highlight that.

The alternative to giving IHT relief is to massively ramp up subsidies - I'm not sure that's a better solution or wouldn't also just benefit industrial scale farms.

[dinny_g]

I believe you've forgotten about the Pasty Tax or even the Poll Tax. All parties U-turn when something they do is unexpectedly unpopular (whether such expectations are justified or not). I don't think that is a Boris era onward invention.

And I think today's pressures on governments all stem from the cult of the individual, driven by social media and a belief that every decision should be for my individual benefit, not the collective good

[Jobbo]

The alternative to giving IHT relief is to massively ramp up subsidies - I'm not sure that's a better solution or wouldn't also just benefit industrial scale farms.

That's absolutely not an alternative - subsidies are required anyway because otherwise farmers making way less than minimum wage will be so impoverished they'll starve. A tax when they die has no bearing on that whatsoever.

The sad thing is that subsidies now seem to be incentivising not growing any produce - see Harry's farm videos in the last few months other than the one where he railed against the IHT change.

Any business which doesn't make a profit you can live on is a lifestyle business, like it or not. It is sad that farming has fallen into that category and that does need addressing, but changing IHT to plug a loophole that has been pricing farmland out of farmers' hands is not the way to do that. If there is a rethink I hope it totally disincentivises holding farmland as a tax planning strategy (raising IHT to the standard rate is the way to do that) while at the same time changing the way farmers are incentivised. Those are two separate things really.

[GG.]

That's why I said ramping up subsidies to push them more into the black.

I'm afraid I think that's a bit of a naive view that sectors of the economy which require support (and are generally only done so because of a public good or public interest) is just "lifestyle". There are huge swathes of manufacturing and energy sector, etc. which are given such support. In my view farmers (particularly small non-industrialised farms) are probably at the most deserving end of these beneficiaries.

If you're in favour of a wholesale roll back of sectoral economic support you're probably the most economically libertarian on here!

[ZedLeg]

Aye, I said elsewhere there are bigger problems in farming than the iht.

We need to be making sure that farmers are getting a fair price for their produce.

[ZedLeg]

We could nationalise farming

[GG.]

That worked well for Stalin... no, wait...

I agree though. Farming is one of the most in need and neglected sectors of the economy in my view and comprehensively taken to the brink by the pile it high sell it cheap supermarkets.

[Rich B]

Something doesn’t add up in this whole emotive story.

If farming is so low profit that even farmers who have inherited huge values of farmland and machinery at zero cost can only make such shit money, How are farmers who have to buy their land (so have large mortgages) AND farm it can making ends meet?

We seem to be fixated that all farmers only make £20k for working 90 hour weeks - which is clearly not the case for all farmers. And if this is the case for ones who’ve inherited £5m of farmland, then they should probably quit - because they’re not very good at it.

[ZedLeg]

They aren’t. The folk buying farms now are folk landbanking or developers looking for land to build on.

Farming doesn’t make money. iirc eggs and milk are currently sold to supermarkets at less than they cost to produce.

[ZedLeg]

That worked well for Stalin... no, wait...

I agree though. Farming is one of the most in need and neglected sectors of the economy in my view and comprehensively taken to the brink by the pile it high sell it cheap supermarkets.

I’m generally of the opinion that any industry that is getting significant subsidies might as well be owned by the government.

Like, what’s the worst that could happen if farmers sold to the government and were paid a salary for working the land?

[Mito Man]

I'm inclined to agree with Rich

Also paying farmers a fair price for produce sounds well and good until you go into a farmshop owned by a farmer. Pay £40 for a bag of everyday groceries and realise it would absolutely fuck the entire country.

There's loads of council farms here, but I have no clue how they work. Are the farmers all contractors? Do they hire the machinery? Kind of odd, like you're not parking a tracktor outside a terraced house. Do they get paid a set wage?

[ZedLeg]

Yes it’s definitely the farmers fault that the supermarkets and manufacturers they supply strong arm them over prices

[GG.]

You guys are starting to make me thankful for having a reasonable and rational person like Rachel Reeves running the economy.

Apparently we should wind off all subsidies and collectivise farms in a giant expansion of the state sector. What could go wrong!

Anyway I think I'll bow out of this conversation as this whole thing is rapidly trending toward the stark raving mad.

[ZedLeg]

I’m all ears for any suggestions beyond “get better at farming scrubs”

[Gavster]

Something doesn’t add up in this whole emotive story.

If farming is so low profit that even farmers who have inherited huge values of farmland and machinery at zero cost can only make such shit money, How are farmers who have to buy their land (so have large mortgages) AND farm it can making ends meet?

We seem to be fixated that all farmers only make £20k for working 90 hour weeks - which is clearly not the case for all farmers. And if this is the case for ones who’ve inherited £5m of farmland, then they should probably quit - because they’re not very good at it.

Farmers aren't buying farmland, institutional investors and large corporations are buying them and adding them onto their huge estates into ever increasingly large farms. The average age of a farmer is around 65 and lost of their kids don't want to be farmers.

"All sizes of farm from below 20 hectares to just under 200 hectares have dwindled in number since 2005. Farms of less than 20ha fell by 33.5%; 20 to less than 50ha farms declined by 22%; 50 to 100ha by 11.6% and 100 to less than 200ha by 7.3%. However, the number of farms above 200ha (around 500 acres) has increased by 5.7% over the same ten years to 2015"

https://www.cpre.org.uk/wp-content/uplo ... arvest.pdf

[Rich B]

Im not making any suggestions. i’m just asking how £5m farms with zero mortgages and massively reduced machinery/set up costs are saying they only make £20-30k a year.

It just doesn’t make any sense, when new farmers with presumably huge mortgages and epic machinery set up costs are also saying they’re only making £20-30k a year.

Not all farms are owned by big corporates, or who are the people protesting?

I’m clearly dumb or worse than Hitler for asking.

[ZedLeg]

Yeah, there was that stat I found that said although the average farm size is around 35 hectares, more than half of farms are under 20.

The massive size of the biggest farms are skewing the results.

[Rich B]

Yeah, there was that stat I found that said although the average farm size is around 35 hectares, more than half of farms are under 20.

The massive size of the biggest farms are skewing the results.

So these average 35 hectare farms. They’re presumably not worth £3m+, and not every one is handed down to the next generation. So there must be people buying and running them, at a profit.