Farmers ‘squeezed out’ of agricultural land market by millionaires
Farmers ‘squeezed out’ of agricultural land market by millionaires
The trend is being linked to financial advice that recommends the potential tax breaks of investing in farmland.
Five suggestions to Save British Farming:
- set up a charitable fund to pay off distressed farmers’ inheritance bills;
- institute a chain of collectively owned farm shops in every market town to act as a mini supermarket for seasonal produce;
- demand boycotts of supermarkets and/or products where price fixing is taking place, robbing farmers;
- blockade factory farms and mass mechanised greenhouses owned by front companies for private equity firms;
- set up a direct action group to occupy and obstruct individuals and businesses which are destroying UK family farming.
How’s that for a start? Please add your own suggestions in the comments below. www.tlio.org.uk
There has been a huge surge in wealthy individuals and institutions buying up farmland across England, according to new analysis, with a parallel drop in the amount of agricultural land actively used for farming.
We represent farmers, consumers and members of the food production industry. We are currently protesting the trade deals our government is negotiating which fail to protect British animal welfare and environmental standards for imports.
https://savebritishfood.org
Farmers have been descending on Westminster to protest Labour’s new inheritance tax rules, which could threaten to close a well-used tax loophole for the wealthy.
Thousands of agricultural workers have been protesting in central London, with Tom Bradshaw, the president of the National Farmers’ Union, saying he has “never seen the united sense of anger” there in the industry today.
Speaking to reporters en-route to Rio de Janeiro, the prime minister reinforced the point that the overwhelming majority of farmers would be exempt from the changes, suggesting this message may not be getting through.
“Obviously, there’s an issue around inheritance tax and I do understand the concern.
“But for a typical case, which is parents with a farm they want to pass on to one of their children, by the time you’ve taken into account not only the exemption for the farm property itself, but also the exemption for spouse to spouse, then parent to child, it’s £3 million before any inheritance tax will be payable.
“Over the £3 million, it’s then 20 per cent rather than the usual rate and it’s payable over 10 years.”
Data collected by property consultants Strutt & Parker show farmers are increasingly being squeezed out of the agricultural land market by wealthy investors.
While non-farmers were responsible for less than a third of farmland purchases in 2010, by last year this had risen to 56 per cent.
In the last year alone, 400,000 hectares (988,422 acres) of agricultural land has been taken out of use for farming.
The analysis is linking this to financial advice that recommends the potential tax breaks of investing in farmland.
MPs Why didn’t Treasury abolish business rollover relief, rather than put inheritance tax on farmers?
Jeremy Moody, secretary and adviser at Central Association for Agricultural Valuers, added that the tax changes would not discourage companies from snapping-up farmland, adding: “It is only individuals who die.”
Over half of farmers who gain from tax loophole have ‘no involvement in farming in any way’
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/over-half-farmers-who-gain-34294829
Hundreds of farmers in tractors descended on Westminster to protest, while MPs heard less than half of estates claiming agricultural relief made any income from farming in five years
Farmers in tractors staged another protest over the government’s inheritance tax changes – despite fresh claims large landowners are the big winners from current rules.
Hundreds descended on London, with go-slow demonstrations on dual carriageways in a number of other places. It marked a second day of action in the wake of Rachel Reeves’s Budget announcement that farms worth more than £1million will pay 20% inheritance tax from 2026.
Farmers called the change “another kick in the teeth”, while some backed cutting off food supplies in the new year as “wake up call”.
It came as MPs scrutinising the shake-up heard more than half those claiming a lucrative tax break to avoid death duties have “no involvement in farming in any way”.
The 20% inheritance tax rate – half that for everyone else – replaces two types of relief worth up to 100%.
Dr Arun Advani, director of Centre for the Analysis of Taxation, told the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee: “Less than half of the estates who are claiming agricultural relief have any income from farming anywhere in the five years before death.”
About 44% of the claims are from people you would think of as farmers.”
The others, he said, are “a mix of people who own a house and some pony paddocks or who own land and let it out to a lot of people but are not involved in any farming in any way.”
The Mirror revealed this month how a quarter of all England’s farmland belongs to just 2,500 owners. The highly respected Institute for Fiscal Studies says those paying more tax under the changes would be heavily concentrated among large wealthy landowners.
But Dr Advani warned, at 20%, the inheritance tax rate still made it attractive for the wealthy to buy up agricultural land, pushing up prices for genuine smaller family farmers who want to work the land themselves.
Jeremy Moody, secretary and adviser at Central Association for Agricultural Valuers, added that the tax changes would not discourage companies from snapping-up farmland, adding: “It is only individuals who die.”Tom Bradshaw, president of the National Farmers’ Union, claimed Ms Reeves had refused to meet.