Farming Talk: S star farm sizes
With all the coverage recently, regarding farms' Inheritance Tax, you'd think most people in the industry would have an idea of how big a farm needs to be to be called "large", yet that's how a local, well respected land agent described a one hundred acre farm. They add that it's valued at £1,500,000, but according to the Government, that would be under the IHT threshold, so not even big enough to make a living, let alone find a million pounds for tax.
It was a dairy farm, but the cows have gone and the farmer is retiring. That acreage could just about support a family, with massive investment in say, dairy cows, pigs or chickens.
However it's being marketed in five lots, thus reducing its viability from a working farm to a hobby farm. Of course, there's nothing wrong with this. Lots of people start out small and progress. We did, we bought a croft of four acres, then ten, and then were tenants of a 250 acre livestock farm, which was a good living in the "Olden Days!" But unless you're prepared to diversify - sell the barns for development or holiday lets or open a farm shop, you won't make a living now, plus, you'll need all the subsidies and grants you can get from the Government, which will be "fine tuned" over the next years.
So why does it bother me that so many "family farms" are being reduced this way? There are plenty of wealthy people out there prepared to scoop up anything that's green, to produce, maybe food - or maybe trees - or maybe electricity. The trouble is, these investors have more money than most of us can imagine, and they are the people the IHT should really be targeting, but as so often happens with badly planned laws, the collateral damage will be more than anyone thought. This is why farmers are protesting. And once land prices have been hiked beyond our reach, they're very unlikely to become family farms ever again, unless some are let at frighteningly high rents, putting them out of the reach of your average tenant.
With most farmers being almost at retirement age, which the Government is loving, younger farmers have very little chance, unless they inherit, and after selling some land to pay the infamous tax, there may not be enough left to work.
The recent tractor protests are not just about a family keeping their farm, which sounds a bit “privileged” doesn’t it, to us who aren’t in that position. But I have lived the 24/7, 365 days a year life that comes with that "privilege", and understand and still miss it, every day, as my poor bored friends know! The protests are about how we're going to keep producing food for this country, though supermarkets would have you believe they will always be able to supply what you want, so why bother with home grown food. anyway?
It's a bad law, and like the Poll Tax, (remember that?) it must not be allowed to go ahead. Aggravated by the lack of knowledge or commitment by our politicians, (just my opinion of course), there are too many complications relating to the future of farming and our food supply, which I don't understand nor could ever solve - being the simple retired peasant farmer that I am!!
Rosemary Allen,
Fieldview, Crosemere Road, Cockshutt