I don’t usually step outside of my lane, but sometimes things have to be said, which some may call political, but I call pragmatic. In fact, I find politics so frustrating that I refuse to watch the news or read a newspaper because I feel totally disenfranchised and unable to do anything but get upset and annoyed.
However, I have not been able to ignore the most recent attack on farmers for two reasons – firstly, my best friend is a farmer. She cares for 2,000 pigs and 400 sheep, plus goats and alpacas, and secondly, I am the first generation from my family to not make my living from the land myself.
To the politicians sitting on Mount Olympus and rolling the dice that impacts these lives, it a simple matter of economics: impose more taxes on farmers because they have high value assets. They see farmland as any other commodity that has a value and, therefore, that should equal a return. So, from a reasonable standpoint, they would see maybe 7% per annum.
After all, who would own an asset worth millions and get little or no return? Farmers, that’s who. There is a thick vein of this particular brand of insanity running through me, and I can tell you that there are many years when farmers make minimal profit or a loss. They work ridiculous hours, especially when working with livestock, at the whim of British weather, never knowing from one year to the next whether they will make any money. That means during lambing, for example, sometimes a period of 24, 36 or even 48 hours without sleep, often for less than minimum wage.
People who don’t farm don’t understand because it doesn’t make any sense, so they assume that there is lots of money in farming. Farmers know that it is a commitment to their animals, their land, their families, their descendants, and their ancestors that drives them on. It’s a special sort of crazy, which gives the rest of us a green and pleasant land and food on the table.
Historically, inheritance tax was applied to farmland. The result of this was my grandfather’s farm, along with many others, being sold off in parcels, and eventually built on. If farms are saddled with additional debt (to pay taxes), small farms won’t survive. Land is not a saleable asset to farmers; it is a source of income (some years) and a way of life. This special type of crazy is passed down with the land’ and our country and our heritage will be poorer without it.
Some of you may argue that inheritance tax can be avoided by passing assets seven years before death. Two things to remember here: farming is a high-risk occupation due to the hazards of farm machinery, animals, and suicide rates, and farmers are really, really bad at passing things on before they die, because they work until they drop.
The only winners from this policy are big corporations, which want to prairie farm and save costs by working large areas. Goodbye small fields, goodbye hedges, goodbye diversity and yet again, handing profits to the richest 10% who hold 50% of the country’s wealth.
Great job for the working man! Let’s have some politicians who have experience of actual work, instead of making decisions on things that they have read about at university.
