NFU President Tom Bradshaw said: 鈥湺俦鸫诎光�檚 estimated Farm Business Income figures for 2023/24, confirmed today, paint a stark picture of the challenges facing many farmers, with rising input costs,聽significantly lower commodity prices,聽a reduction in direct payments and one of the wettest winters in聽decades聽leaving many businesses worse off. For example, cereal farmers have seen their income fall by 73% and income for dairy farmers has fallen by 68% compared to 2022/23.
鈥淲hen these figures were first estimated back in March 2024, we said that we needed a government that would create policies to support British agriculture and help farmers and growers to build financial resilience into their businesses. Profitable farm businesses are essential if we are to deliver what the country needs; food security, with food produced to world leading standards and environmental protection.
鈥淚nstead, we have seen the opposite. The recent Budget announcing changes to Agriculture Property Relief (APR) and Business Property Relief (BPR) have left farmers reeling. Many will be faced with a tax bill of millions. Some will be forced to sell all or part of their farm to raise the funds.
鈥淭hese are the working people of our countryside, the majority of them working for little profit but happy in the knowledge their life鈥檚 work will mean they can pass the farm on to the next generation. This tax threatens to change all that. It threatens our food security and with the compounded impact of National Insurance and National Living Wage changes, it threatens to push up food prices for consumers.
鈥淭here has been a clear Treasury miscalculation of the impact this will have on farmers and growers. The Treasury is working off the wrong figures. This policy won鈥檛 protect family farms, it will do the opposite.
鈥淭reasury officials have assumed that all previous APR claims are working farms, which is not the case. Nor did these claims include those eligible for BPR. Far from protecting smaller family farms, which is what ministers say they鈥檙e doing, they鈥檙e protecting private houses in the country with a few acres let out for grazing while disproportionately hammering actual, food-producing farms which are, on paper, much more valuable. Even the department responsible for farm policy, Defra, has figures which show this, with the department鈥檚 own data showing two thirds of farms could be affected.
鈥淎nother key question is what impact assessment has been done ahead of this policy announcement on homegrown food production? Because if farms are being broken up and sold, British food will be hit. There is a very real threat to our long-term food security because there is no incentive to invest for the future. Any available cash will now be going into pension provisions rather than investing in the infrastructure on farm to deliver food security for the next decade and beyond.
鈥淎t last year鈥檚 NFU Conference, we heard from Sir Keir Starmer that 鈥楲osing a farm is not like losing any other business, it can鈥檛 come back鈥�. He was absolutely right. It can鈥檛. And neither can its ability to produce food for the nation.
鈥淭he pressure is building. Defra and the Treasury are aware that on 19 November, NFU members will be making their way to Westminster to take part in our mass lobby of MPs. We will be looking them in the eye and asking if they support this family farm tax, or if they will do the right thing for their farming constituents and support our call for it to be reversed.
鈥淭he only sensible course of action is for the Treasury to reverse this decision and soon.鈥�