Farmers need our help in 2026 more than ever before - Andrew Vine
A new year’s resolution all of us who live in Yorkshire should make is to do everything we can to support our county’s farmers in 2026.
That means shopping at butchers who source meat from producers in their area, and spending our money at farm shops and farmers’ markets. Every penny we can afford to put into an industry that does so much to define the character and landscape of Yorkshire matters.
Our farmers need all the help they can get during this forthcoming year, because of government idiocy, ignorance and stubbornness for its own sake that could drive many out of business and change the face of the countryside for the worse.
In four months’ time, the ruinous family farm tax will come into effect, penalising people who have worked the land and put food on the public’s plates for generations with bills that could bankrupt them.
The impact of this ill-conceived and deeply flawed policy, introduced in the first budget of the Labour government will cause harm out of all proportion to the contribution it makes to the country’s finances.
In relative terms, it will raise only a pittance. Yet farms and livelihoods will vanish as a consequence, compromising Britain’s food security.
The rationale for the introduction of the new tax regime did not stand up to scrutiny when Chancellor Rachel Reeves first announced it, and in the wake of her second budget last month when it became apparent the country’s financial position was better than expected, it looks even more wrong-headed.
The tractors that drove into London to register farmers’ anger at what is being done to their industry undoubtedly carried with them public support.
Grudgingly, the Chancellor announced a slight tweak to inheritance tax rules allowing spouses who own farms jointly to reduce their liability, but that is nowhere near enough.
Only a complete reversal of a measure that will make family farms unviable will do, and there are signs that pressure is growing from within the ranks of Labour’s own MPs for that to happen.
In the debate that followed the budget, North Northumberland MP David Smith read out a series of letters from distressed farmers in his constituency, including one whose family faces a tax bill of £400,000, a sum that they could not earn from 20 years of work.
There will be more letters like it arriving on the desks of Yorkshire MPs after the tax changes take effect in April, and every Labour member must surely see the madness of imposing such unfair and unrealistic charges on predominantly small businesses.
Farmers will be left with no option other than selling land to meet the bills, destroying their means of making a living in the process.
This is a policy born of ignorance about agriculture and a wilful failure to understand it.
Digging its heels in and insisting there will be no going back on the changes, despite abundant evidence that they will cause immense harm, is the hallmark of an intransigent government refusing to listen to reason and unwilling to act in the country’s best interests.
And it should surely be obvious to even the metropolitan types that govern Labour that it is in the national interest to support a healthy and profitable farming industry.
That is plainly understood by the major supermarkets, who have expressed concern about the impact the family farm tax will have on their suppliers. It is a major selling point for the big retailers to prominently label produce as British, because it is a guarantee of quality.
Shoppers understand that too, which is why 275,000 members of the public have added their voices to calls to reverse the policy, alongside trade bodies representing 160,000 family businesses.
A government that claims to have economic growth as its priority simply cannot be taken seriously if it persists with a measure that destroys jobs and firms which have consistently said uncertainty about what the tax changes will mean for their future is already preventing them from investing.
But there still needs to be greater public awareness of the damage that threatens Britain’s food supply and the countryside.
It does not seem to have occurred to the government that undermining agriculture has profound implications for rural communities which are so important to Yorkshire.
Farmers will not be the only people who suffer if they go bust. The ripples will spread out through market towns and villages, spreading waves of deprivation and undermining the prospects of the young.
This is a truly dreadful scenario and entirely attributable to one of the worst policy decisions by any government of modern times.
MPs and trade organisations need to keep up the pressure on the Prime Minister and Chancellor to perform a U-turn. And in the meantime, all of us have our part to play in helping farmers by showing how much we value them.