'My heart's not in it' - Fourth generation farmer says tax hit puts his future in doubt

“When I was in London with other farmers in November,” says Graham. “I had tears in my eyes listening to the speakers. It felt so sad then, and it’s no better now. At home we thought we had everything covered. Well, it’s not now, by a long way.

Graham is the fourth generation to farm at The Grange, Baldersby St James. The farm is a 500-acre arable business.

Graham supplements the farm with agricultural contracting work for local farmers and has three cottages that are let to long-term tenants. His wife Maria has worked full-time as a business development manager for 25 years.

Graham and his father Terry, in his mid-80s and still working, are partners in a family farming partnership and just under half the business is already in Graham’s name, but there are still huge implications that will most definitely force his hand into what could turn out to knock out of kilter all projections and make the farm unviable, without even thinking about how the weather might affect things. He’s considering leaving farming altogether.

“If something happens to my dad over this next seven years and nothing gets changed with Inheritance Tax proposals I don’t think I can raise the amount of money I would need to make to pay the Inheritance Tax bill spread over 10 years and if that meant I had to sell so many acres, the farm would not be sustainable.

“If our younger teenage daughter Georgina, who is showing a keen interest and has just done her first proper harvest, and my nephew Luke who works full-time here as well as going contracting didn’t want to farm it, because I have to think about them too, I think I would just sell up right now, sell the land, probably keep the farmhouse and buildings and do something with it to try and make a living.

“My great grandfather, grandfather, father and uncle have built this farm up over the years and I thought I’d done a pretty good job with all the things I’ve done.

"I’ve always been an innovator, learning and introducing new technology on the farm, taking on whatever has come up or we’ve been asked to, but you can’t just carry on if you can’t afford it.

“I’m also one of the lead farmers in my area in a concern called Sustainable Landscapes with Future Food Solutions working alongside Yorkshire Water, but when the accountant tells you that over the last two years you’ve made a loss, partly through ever increasing prices of farm machinery and tougher times in growing grain due to the weather conditions and being able to selling grain at the right price - and to then be given the news we received by a Government that is allegedly meant to be helping agriculture, there’s little way that you can think you have a future as farmers.

“There are also not that many industries that get dictated what they are paid for their produce and that are dependent so much on the weather. The Government just don’t seem that bothered about us.

“It wouldn’t be so bad if we were paid properly for what we produce. That’s my biggest bugbear of all. We should be getting £300-£350 per tonne for our wheat. Then we’d have the money to put away for these things.

“We’ve been to see our accountant and the only thing that we’re thinking if this tax doesn’t get changed is to put everything into my name and then hope and pray that dad will live until he’s 92.

Graham has been running the farm for the past 18 years but says the past two have been some of his most challenging.

“We have had some good years, good yields and not bad prices but these past two harvests have been poor and this last harvest was the worst we’ve ever had. In the last couple of years we’ve had poor yields and lost 43 acres of crop in one 50 acre field last year.

“This year our Dawsum wheat variety averaged around 4 tonnes per acre, but we lost 40-plus acres of it due to poor weather, and our oilseed rape yield was abysmal. Normally we’d yield 170-200 tonnes, but we had just 50 tonnes because of flea beetle on establishment.

"We lost 80 acres of our 120 acres. When we tried to substitute what we’d lost on rape by putting in canary seed in spring we had another disaster.”

Graham feels that these are stories that go unheard by the Government, but he’s still trying to think positively.

“We normally grow around 250 acres of wheat. We’ve 230 acres in the ground for 2025 and it’s looking not too bad at the moment. We’ve 100 acres of first wheats and 130 of second wheats with Bamford, a new variety.

“Our rotation is usually first wheat, second wheat, cover crop, spring barley followed by oilseed rape. Normally we grow about 120 acres of spring malting barley variety Laureate that goes straight to maltsters Muntons.

“This year we’ve put in about 90 acres of oilseed rape which would normally be more but we’re putting in 36 acres of vining peas. We weren’t going to go with rape this time but we get a hell of a lot better margin on it and although it’s high risk, this time it has come up well.

Graham tells of why he continued with it this year.

“We had probably one of wettest springs we’ve had and there were no insects. I felt that if the flea beetle hadn’t had the conditions to breed then they weren’t going to be about.

“We also have some herbal grass leys and some wild bird mixes. We’ve just come out of the countryside stewardship scheme and gone into the new SFI scheme. I’d rather be growing food, but you do what you have to do.

“We started direct drilling in 2013 and I’ve not used the plough since and I don’t really want to, but I now have a problem with brome and I may have to change my cropping to fix it.

Graham and Maria’s eldest daughter Suzannah was pictured by our photographers holding a sign at the farmers gathering in Thirsk, showing support and Maria says she shares Graham’s sadness.

“The past generations have worked so hard to keep the land in such good shape as guardians for the next generation. To think that might not happen, especially if you’re as passionate as Georgina is showing early signs of being, is incredibly sad.

“Graham cares so much about the environment too. To think that might be taken away just seems wrong.

“The government is saying that farmers just don’t want to pay any tax. That’s not true. We are fine paying tax, but we also need to be able to make a living and this tax won’t allow us to do that.