Member

This tax has represented an existential threat to the farming community, threatening to break the chain of family ownership that holds our countryside together through the generations. It comes on top of the wider challenges of the economic environment that farmers now operate in. On the surface, these farming assets are worth a lot, but the reality is that most family farms operate on incredibly thin margins or are loss making. Sharp rises in input costs—fuel, feed and fertiliser—labour shortages, national insurance contribution increases and unfairness in the supply chain mean that nationally the average profit on capital invested in farm businesses is less than 1%.