Click here to add text.There were no surprises in yesterday's budget. It was laced with catastrophic implications for small family farms, and considering the inevitable outcomes, it's hard to believe that any thought has actually been given to the consequences.
Under the new rules, a small farm with a few buildings and enough ground to be viable will be looking at an inheritance tax bill of hundreds of thousands of pounds upon the demise of the head of the family.
Those at the helm of multigenerational farms will now be trying to fathom a way to prevent the family legacy, and means to earn a living, from being wiped out in one swoop upon the next death.
There is never a sense of ownership with a farm, more so you assume the role of caretaker until it passes down to the next custodian, but what you long to avoid is being responsible for a succession plan which fails to equip the incoming generation with the tools to ensure the continuation of the farm - something agricultural property relief helped smooth the way for, until now.
The changes to the way farmers will be taxed have the potential to decimate agriculture in a single generation - pretty horrifying for those in the firing line.
If the incoming generation are already farming when they inherit, they will struggle to pay the tax bill because farming is not lucrative enough.
The alternative is to sell some of the inherited assets to pay the tax, but this would result in a farm business devoid of sufficient fixed assets and lacking the means to remain viable.
Farms will succumb and with each one that is lost, so too will go the expertise of a farming family.
Our children are 7 and 8 and already they probably have a better understanding of food production, animal husbandry and countryside stewardship than most of the non-farming adult population.
The knowledge which passes down through the generations is as valuable to agriculture as the farms themselves but once the chains of succession begin to break down these skills and knowledge become lost.
What will be retained of agriculture for the future when the means to farm has been taken from the next generation and they have been driven out of the industry? 💔
