'Standing together is all we can do' - Meet the man behind the Back British Farmers event in Thirsk

“It was all quite daunting seeing the number that attended our gathering that we simply held at the same time as the farmers gathering in London, for those like us who couldn’t be away from our livestock for too long and others who just wanted to show support and stand together.

“I farm in partnership with my parents Brian and Anne Wise on what I’d call a proper family farm.

"I’m the fourth generation to farm here since my great grandfather bought this farm in the 1940s having been a tenant farmer in Ripon previously. When I was a kid it’s all I wanted to be. I can work stock, I can drive a tractor and that’s about it really. What else am I going to do?”

Phil says he and his wife Clare came up with the idea of the Thirsk get-together between the two of them.

“It was a bit of a rush, getting it sorted. I had been getting phone calls asking whether I was going down to London, but we really didn’t have the time because of the stock and we realised that there might be many more, like us that didn’t have the time but wanted to be supportive.

"That’s when we thought why didn’t we do something in Thirsk? Even if we just went with a tractor, parked up and had fish and chips. That’s how it started.

“I had a word with a few customers and neighbours, we put it on Facebook and other social media and it was quite surprising how many people couldn’t go to London for whatever reason and were glad of the Thirsk idea.

"We said we’d all meet at the same time as the march was on, show our support and it got out of control in a good way.”

Phil is keen to stress that although the headline news has majored on the Government’s plans for Inheritance Tax, the various other tax changes proposed form a perfect storm for most family farming businesses and that Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have shown a total disregard for UK farmers.

“Everybody thinks it’s all about Inheritance Tax and it isn’t.

"If farming could stand to pay those tax rises that have been announced we would pay quite happily knowing that the NHS, the schools, the armed forces or whoever needs the money gets it and it makes this country better but unfortunately most farmers haven’t got a spare penny.

"So, where this is all going to come from without food prices going up considerably I just don’t know.

“There’s a lot more that will hit farming and of course other businesses, anybody that employs anybody, with the lift in National Insurance and in the minimum wage.

"I was talking to someone the other day who reckons that’s going to add 10 per cent on to his wage bill. Then there’s tax on pickups. There’s £50 per tonne ‘greening tax’ on fertiliser.

"Nobody seems to want to talk about these things. They are just getting pushed under the carpet. I did some sums the other night and the new Fertiliser Tax is going to add something between £5-£10 per tonne on top of our grain cost.

"Is grain going to go up another £10 per tonne to cover this? And if you use less fertiliser you will be less efficient.

“It’s just getting crazy. I’m not saying there aren’t other areas of business that aren’t the same.

"One retail consortium has said they will have to put prices up or cut employment because they can’t afford the hike in National Insurance and minimum wage. I don’t know what the answer is.

"The country needs money I know but they need to find it from somewhere else because farmers will just pack up.”

Fortunately, for now, that’s not the case for Phil and Clare and their young family of teenage son Richard and daughter Katie.

Phil works every hour, mainly on his own on the 370-acre farm, with a herd of 75 suckler cows, flock of 200-plus breeding ewes, bed and breakfast pigs, arable land growing wheat, barley, oilseed rape, lucerne and fodder beet and also running an agricultural contracting business.

Clare runs Total Farm Solutions an agricultural bookkeeping and account business. They also have a PYO flowers enterprise and Richard has his own flock of pedigree Suffolks and Texels.

“We grow about 260 acres of crops and let a bit of land out for potatoes,” says Phil. “We’ve sown all our winter crops and have around 100 acres of winter wheat, about 70 acres of winter barley; 20-30 acres oilseed rape, along with fodder beet and lucerne.

“We had 30 acres of spring barley this year as we’d struggled getting land drilled last year and it did really well. We trade our wheat and rape but the rest is all grown for our stock.

"We’re on very light land, which is why we let some for potatoes. We average around 3 tonnes per acre on wheat and this year’s yields were certainly average. I also do some contracting including baling, combining and drilling.”

Phil’s livestock mix is about to be added to further in the near future.

“I run a commercial suckler herd including pedigree Simmentals but mainly Simmental-Angus crosses that breed a decent replacement cow. We calve in spring and all stock produced, apart from replacements, is sold in Northallerton livestock market.

“We lamb 120-150 ewes early in January for Easter and another batch in April. They are a ‘League of Nations’ of whitefaced-crossed Texels put back to a Texel tup.

“I have been doing B&B pigs during summer and now I’m going with them full-time through Yorkshire Farmers Livestock Marketing, as a nursery unit for pigs from around 4 to 12 weeks old. It’s something where we can get a monthly cheque, which is welcome.”

Phil says that speaking while stood on a tractor in the middle of market wasn’t something he wanted to do, but that he and Clare are prepared to organise other events to keep getting the message across about how much the budget decisions will affect farming, the countryside and the price of food.

“It wasn’t my thing to do that in Thirsk, but people I have spoken to since have said how much better they felt coming for a couple of hours. Everyone had a cup of coffee and a natter.

“A lot of the time in farming you’re on your own. One person said that if nothing else we’d done wonders for everybody’s mental health and that he’d felt a lot better for coming.

"Standing together is all we can do and it feels a lot better doing it.”