Brexit is a huge opportunity for farming in the U.K. We are out of the Common Agricultural Policy which directed too much subsidy to the largest and more profitable farms. It damaged our dairy industry by not allocating us enough milk quota, and our beef industry by too prolonged a response to BSE. It led to a big decline in the proportion of home produced food during our membership. They paid grants to remove our orchards.
On exit government promised farmers the same level of subsidy out of the EU as in it, with a planned redistribution away from the large corn estates. Unfortunately the government decided to allocate much of the money via the ELMs scheme, rewarding not growing food rather than growing it. Large estates could turn over more land for wilding and take the cash. Many family working farms wanting to maximise food output did not qualify or did not bother to apply for grants.
I and a few other MPs lobbied strenuously for grants ,subsidies and affordable finance to promote more and more productive food production instead of ELMs. Some schemes were introduced but the sums remained small compared to the environmental grants.
The latest government attack on family farms with their ill thought through IHT proposals has understandably raised the opposition of the farmers. Family farms may well have to be broken up or sold to richer larger landowners and companies to pay the death taxes.
We need policies to promote the retention of family farms and to encourage more investment in food growing. Why do government want us to import much of our food as well as much of our energy and manufactured goods? When will they support growers and makers so we can earn a living as a nation and increase our national resilience?
November 18, 2024
The evil policies of Defra created by the last government are continuing under this present one so food security remains a fond hope.
The retail banking complaints team operative likely used materially incomplete information to devise her destructive IHT grab, confining her review to historical data on agricultural reliefs sought by estates whilst ignoring business assets relief claims that are typically made in tandem. Just like VAT on school fees, the motive seem spite rather than anything worthy.
November 18, 2024
Farmers are seen as major polluters by the net zero scamners and their land must be used for approved use as windfarms and solar farms.
Despite neither helping our energy security it gives a warm fuzzy feeling to the climate change zealots.
When we are finally reduced to third world status by totally wiping out industry and farming, where does our Lords and masters think the money will come from to import the goodies.
The Farmers, like Reform have a mammoth task turning this government inspired idiotic tanker around.
Let’s wish them luck.
November 18, 2024
Good morning.
I have been watching on YT episodes about the Russian Kulaks and what happened to them under the Communist Party. The history of that terrible episode has some worryingly similarities to what has been happening in Europe and the UK.
Basically we have a situation where those that create policies simply do not understand how farming works. Putting cattle and poultry farming to one side, agricultural farming (as seen from Harry’s Farm) is a very hit and miss affair. Much depends upon the weather which, in the UKm can be very challenginf and variable. Then you have the world markets and the prices farmers can get for their crop yields. Margins are fine and one bad year could spell the end. Farmers and their hands also have to work some very bad hours usually into the night.
What I think famers need is some support for bad times and a stable regulatory regime. They can then begin to plan longterm and look to build a successful business. Having people brining in rules, regulations and taxes without ever meeting farmers or their union, the NFU, shows toal comtempt for these people. The same contempt the Soviets showed to Kulaks.
Reply Action against the Kulaks was often violent and extreme. It meant many were imprisoned and some executed. EU/UK is hitting farmers with laws and taxes, not physical violence
November 18, 2024
‘ Why do government want us to import much of our food as well as much of our energy and manufactured goods? When will they support growers and makers so we can earn a living as a nation and increase our national resilience?’
Because they are controlled by globalist ideas in the same way as the Netherlands. (Rich globalists Ed) will own a huge chunk of British farmland. ……
Governments will never act in the interests of the nation state unless they are forced to break their ties to globalists.
November 18, 2024
Well at last the 39 bus has arrived, something we cannot blame the govenor of the Bank of England for.
All you say about farming is true and I am sure you put maximum pressure on your own government to carry through their promises. It did not register with them. They were intelligent people, what counter their promises pressure were your government put under, and by whom to reneague on their promises and put UK agriculture in such jeopody. I suspect, like our fishermen our farmers became a bargaining chip in the misplaced endeavour to settle trade, rather than opt for WTO rules. Something else you advocated that fell on stoney ground.
It lightened the task of malign Labour to pursue their class war against a high risk industry that is capital rich but income poor. Those seriously wealthy who use agricultural investment to circumvent IHT are only doing what they have to do to survive the ravages of government. IHT is an iniquitous double tax on income already taxed.
I hope the farmers force a change of policy with a gorilla war against the forces of envy, but as I said some time ago prepare for a bumpy ride and high priced sprouts.
November 18, 2024
The IHT raid is cruel. It will break up family farms, which are a traditional part of country life across the UK. It will raise a derisory sum of money compared to all that wasted by government. It appears vindictive.
I have worked as an agricultural labourer in the past, and saw some farmers profit obscenely from subsidy. But many don’t, they work their butts off for variable and sometimes meagre returns. The incentive of passing on the farm to the next generation is a great one and one they deserve to keep. Scrap the IHT grab – it’s an attack on the countryside from a malevolent urban elite.
November 18, 2024
I agree with your comments. I support the farmers in their cause to get this imposition of IHT reversed. It is wrong on several levels. Clearly the implications and their consequences have not been thought through by it’s advocates. It is driven by spite. It accelerates the move to reduce food security by cutting domestic food production. It will undermine the network of sectors that enable and support the current farming ecosystem. It will reduce growth. Farmers have every reason to distrust the words of politicians.
November 18, 2024
In January 2022, nineteen Conservative MPs and peers confirmed their membership of Steve Baker’s Net Zero Scrutiny Group. They took a stand against the Net Zero policy, which is the rationale for Michael Gove’s ELM scheme, and in doing that they supported farming and food security. You were not among them, Sir John. Might I respectfully ask why not?
Reply I did “ belong” I.e. attend the net zero scrutiny group which was organised by Craig Mackinley
November 18, 2024
As always what you think you will get does not deliver. Food production under the EU was totally in their favour. Our orchards were decimated and all we have now are tasteless French and Portuguese apples instead of our lovely tasting varieties which can only be obtained from farmed orchards that still operate. Of course, we were in the EU for too long for younger generations to remember the taste of Cox Pippins freshly brought to market as we did not have the supermarket chains operating and insisting on set shapes and fruit being tampered with to keep it longer for sale. Brexit was supposed to bring back our production of food with the money paid to other farmers in the EU being given to our farmers and, hopefully other younger elements joining the production teams. The Remainers say to it that this was never going to happen along with the corporates who saw to it that they did not lose out. I feel so sorry for the little farmers who will suffer under this Stalinist lot and hope everyone gets behind them in support but I doubt it as the modern generations do not understand what has happened to this country over the last 60 years and it is not for the better.
November 18, 2024
As usual, the situation we find ourselves in is a result of the Not-a-Conservative-Party refusing to deliver LEAVE and continuing to deliver the policies of the WEF, summed up as “the Great Reset,” which no-one has ever voted for and which are designed and intended to reduce the living standards of ordinary people.
If The Treasury had wanted to “go after” wealthy people who were avoiding IHT by buying up farming land, they could have done it. Instead they targeted the entire farming industry, with the viciousness particularly directed at small family-owned farms which can only afford the death tax by selling off their land.
Why would they do that? They claim that it will only raise a small amount (in governmental terms) – less than £2 billion. There are only two plausible reasons:
1. Class warfare. As the nasty socialist, McTernan.
2. Because they want to drive small, family-owned farms out of business.
Keir-Ching! is attempting to impose the WEF’s farming policy: drive small farmers off the land and transfer food production to corporations. Free up the land for solar farms, windmills and housing for migrants. Just like Rutte tried in The Netherlands.
We will not be able to stop the systematic destruction of our country until we have a Government which repudiates the WEF.
November 18, 2024
It is impossible to imagine a nation’s decision to destroy its independent energy capacity, destroy its independent food production and destroy its border security, without concluding the overall ambition by the powers that be is to destroy the Nation.
The policy decision declared by the EU post Maastricht Treaty signed by John Major during your prime political career Sir John was to remove nations as political power blocks and replace them with a unified federal structure modelled on the USA.
It is no surprise the mechanisms advanced to reshape the established national structures via cross border harmonies ,think Schengen areas and CAP +CFP and many other harmonies, still persist and are still being developed here in none EU Britain, to this day.
The need to reassert the validity of Nation has never been more urgent than it is today.
If anyone doubts the continuing drive to a united Europe still exists, they should listen to what Starmer and his government policies are saying. The ambition of Labour Marxists to transform the UK into a region of Europe with no identity beyond it being a large Island off the coast of Mainland Europe, powerless and without access to natural resources continues. The attack on our farming traditions and food security may be the final impoverishment that pushes us over the edge.
We will ‘own nothing’ yet somehow I don’t think we ‘will be happy’?