Why it's time to treat landowners and farmers differently - Christa Ackroyd

It is not for the good of their health that they toil the fields and attend the livestock. It is for the good of ours. We eat their rewards. It’s that simple.

Let me look back at those weeks upon weeks of idyllic summers spent on either my Uncle Lance’s small sheep farm on the North York moors, or my Uncle Hubert’s mixed small farm off the A1 near Dishforth. We never went to stay in the harsher months.

They were just too busy as the days got shorter and the animals were brought in from the cold to entertain we the visitor.

And so farming in my uneducated little head was filled with sunshine and light. And fabulous food. Lots of it. Aunt Nelly’s crispy huge Yorkshire puddings done in the range in a tin that was never washed but wiped, made with eggs from the chickens that scratched at the kitchen door and milk fresh from the cows.

In the pantry in both houses the stone slabs groaned with cooked hams and home baking because boy do farmers work up an appetite. Tomatoes and salad stuff were picked outside in the small garden and life was perfect.

We ran through fields (only after they were cut) climbed trees, mended fences, rode on tractors and went to bed to sleep the uncluttered sleep that a day spent in the fresh air brings.

And never ever, not even once, did I consider the hard work, sheer guts and determination that allowed me my little taste of freedom in the countryside and a much loved escape from city life.

And neither are the Government doing now. By the time my cousin Judy and I emerged for breakfast all those summers ago Uncle Hubert and cousin Tom had already been up for hours milking the cows.

After breakfast while we frolicked wherever we chose to frolic they were nowhere to be seen. A barn roof here, a dry stone wall there, a field to be ploughed, young stock to be tended, the vet to be called. The list of “jobs” was endless. Yet they would have had it no other way. It was in their blood.

Yes they lived well when it came to food. But they didn’t need “stuff” . They didn’t need new furniture or new carpets . They just needed to live the life they were born to.

I never knew Uncle Lance and Uncle Hubert take their family on holiday. A day trip to the odd agricultural show, a visit to the seaside, or a car journey to the city to see relatives like my mum and dad was a day which had to be planned like a military operation.

They arrived late and left early because animals don’t feed themselves. It was a life they lived and a life they loved. And now we are in danger of small farmers or at least those who want to carry on, being forced to sell out to the big boys. Okay, I hear you shout, but things are different now.

We should be eating less meat. We buy our milk from the supermarket. We like fast convenience food, and we live in cities but see the countryside as our playground. We even insist we have a right to roam it, often leaving gates open or rubbish caught in the hedgerows without a second thought for the animals.

So why shouldn’t the farmers pay Inheritance Tax like the rest of us?

Because they are not like the rest of us. They put food on our table. They are in charge of animal welfare. They are the alternative to imports which have gone up by a third after Brexit from countries far away which now have us over a barrel. So put that in your carbon footprint pipe and smoke it.

What is more without them our walk in the countryside which we take for the good of ourselves in both mind and body would be so so different.

Because it is in their interest to mend the styles, trim the hedges, tend the walls and keep the footpaths open away from livestock. And so it is in ours. Actually the budget decision is based on a misnomer that all farmers are rich. Yes some are but most are asset rich and cash poor.

And if you trot out the old adage that they all drive flash four by fours I will show you a dozen more that don’t. The crux of the issue is this.

There is a huge difference to being a landowner and being a farmer. Yes a farmer may own land which he or she needs to farm but a landowner does not need to farm to own land.

So why lump them together for Inheritance Tax? The solution is simple. When the richest people buy expensive land to avoid paying inheritance tax, stop them and charge it.

When the farmer buys it to feed us or make his farm more viable support him. That he wants to hand that to his offspring or sell it as a going concern is to our benefit.

Or do we prefer a handful of super farms owned by hedge funds that would literally tell us when and what we eat, how it is produced and how much it costs?

The truth is if a farmer who inherits or buys a working farm has to sell land to pay for it to continue then we suffer. And we become a nation of huge conglomerates or hobby farmers.

All the farmhouses will be sold to developers who in turn will turn our villages into places posh people can live and commute to wherever they earn enough money to buy them.

And if that sounds extreme consider this. If the farmer has to sell off land to pay the tax then the price of our food goes up too. I don’t need to tell our Chancellor, an economist, that that falls under the bracket of economy of scale.

So here is my advice to Ms Reeves. Treat landowners and farmers differently. Because they are. Ensure that a farm either inherited or bought to farm is just that and it can’t be sold and has to be worked for at least 10 even 20 years without inheritance tax coming into play.

A million pound farm is around a hundred acres not including the house and buildings. Land is at least £10,000 an acre. The farming experts say a farmer needs at least 200 acres to make a living. You do the maths. Either way, as Jeremy Clarkson put it, small farms are in trouble.

Clarkson wrote more than a decade ago that his children were pleased he has gone into farming because it saved them Inheritance Tax. It was a stupid boast made before he found out it is damned hard work to make a living.

The answer is simple.

If we want to preserve the countryside, if we want to know the provenance of our food, if we want to be able to afford to buy it, then we must support our small farmers. To do otherwise, Ms Reeves, is simply false economy.

I do not care about the value of the farms that are left or bought by as long as they continue to do what it says on the tin and farm.

I only know that which ever way you look at it we will all be the poorer without them.