Labour is leading us down a dangerous path with its tax raid on farmers - Yorkshire Post Letters
From: Bob Flyde, West Ardsley, Wakefield.
The consequences of the Labour Government's inheritance tax raid on farms is that farmers having to sell part of their farm to pay the tax will reduce the profitability of the farm.
Most of the land sold will be bought by big companies to offset their carbon footprint for building houses, battery storage, solar panels and planting trees.
The Government's own green policy is already taking thousands of acres out of production for house building, solar panels, trees and rewilding. The population rises every year and yet more and more land is taken out of food production.
The Government is taking the country down a very dangerous path that can’t be reversed. Somebody has to stop this madness. History tells us we had food rationing in this country from January 1940 to July 1954 when we couldn’t produce enough food or import it.
Each household had food coupons to buy a small amount of very basic food. Farming is always long term, if we were short of milk it would take three years before one extra litre could be produced. Nine months the cows’ gestation period, two years, three months the calf to be reared before it produces milk. The same time scale for another kilo of beef.
If we have bad harvests of wheat for bread the next one is a year away.
UK wheat imports have been at the highest volumes since records began almost 30 years ago, for the 2024-25 crop year so far. Wheat imports totalled 1.45m tonnes during the first five months of the season, with merchants and millers keen to get hold of supplies following an exceptionally small UK harvest last year.
The final 2024 UK wheat harvest was just 11.1m tonnes, according to DEFRA, down by 20 per cent on the previous year. Import volumes of wheat entering the UK more than doubled during November alone, compared with the five year average. In excess of 295,000 of wheat was imported into the UK in November, a 71 per cent increase on the same month last year.
We only produce about 60 per cent of our own food now and have to rely on imports.
I wonder if the Labour party has any idea of the serious fate it is leading the country down.