Farmers - a put upon minority or greedy gits - you decide.
- Thread starter Beebo
- Start date
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Electric_Andy
Regular
I don't think he is concerned for himself; as he said in that interview you can use a Trust fund to avoid it but why should everyday farming people have to? I think that was his point anyway. If you have a few grand for a solicitor then it doesn't look like it's a big problem. Also if you are a couple then you can benefit from x2 IHT breaks - that was my interpretation anyway
Plus you can sell elements of the estate to raise the money to pay the tax (unlike everybody else where estate assets cannot be touched until tax paid so you end-up having to borrow to pay the tax before selling eg the house ... Plus they have 10 years to pay the tax bill all interest free.
Ian
Trouble is, what can the Gov. do about that? If they increase subsidies to farmers it means we are all paying the higher price for British produce (albeit indirectly).
Certainly UK farming has changed from when I was working farms. In my day we had to walk, no quad bikes to get around. eg each evening have to walk generally entire farm to head count cattle. Some farms might have a sprayer attachment to bolt on the back of a tractor but these days a dedicatet specialist sprayer seems standard equipment on farms.
Very anecdotal as just personal experience (having lived rurally all my life) but when I lived in France I ended-up having a fair involvement with the farming community (seeing as I'd frequently be asked by local village to put stampeding cattle herds back into a field) and region I lived farmers would all be driving beaten-up Renault 5s (or equivalent). Moved back to UK (East Anglia) and standard farmer domestic car is a Discovery or Range Rover; even small holdings drive those cab truck cab pick-ups (with names like Devastator, Penetrator, Obliterator, etc.). In UK fields have proper gates with professionally installed fencing whereas in France field "gates" were mostly made of barbed wire twisted horizontals with a few floating vertical posts would-in.
Ian
Ian H
Legendary Member
The supermarkets are the villains, shaving every possible penny off the price they pay to their suppliers, who in turn screw the primary producers down. I used to supply quite a few of these producers. They had to open their books to the supermarket buyers. Typical tricks were such as setting up a contract with a new supplier, at a reasonable profit, then congratulating them at the end of the year and 'suggesting' they should reduce their prices. Demanding a percentage of profits annually used also to be a thing, though I think that was stopped. Loss of contract was often the end of any but the largest suppliers, and even then there'd be redundancies.
I've no inside knowledge but I wonder about this and wonder the extent that prices paid to UK growers are affected by imports as well. My thought process is that eg supermarkets need carrots on their shelves and most customers don't look at the "Produce of ..." labels for eg carrots.
So supermarkets either buy from UK suppliers or they buy from overseas growers and they'll be buying from the cheapest source. I can't see UK supermarkets paying UK growers a higher price when imported produce is cheaper, and vice versa. So the contract price must be a a large extent determined by prices from competitor sources.
Ian
Electric_Andy
Regular
Yes some folk have to have all the latest kit. Not so much in Devon. Most farmers had beaten up Landrovers or pickups which would barely pass an MOT. My uncle was saying years back (fuel protests IIRC) that the farmers should have done the slow drive protests with the oldest tractors, not the new £100k ones! It's that sort of thing that makes the public think all Farmers are rich. In a lot of ways though, such equipment is needed. You'd be hard pushed to any tractor implement that can be run on a Massey Ferguson 135. They are all so big that you have to have a big tractor to work them. This also poses another issue, like I found out, that many tractors and machinery such as bailers are too wide for a lot of peoples' gates
bobzmyunkle
Senior Member
I'll put this here because he's a farmer tosser.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/20/how-jeremy-clarkson-could-be-britains-trump/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/20/how-jeremy-clarkson-could-be-britains-trump/
BoldonLad
Old man on a bike. Not a member of a clique.
- Location
- South Tyneside
This prompted me to check my (supermarket, ASDA) purchases this morning:
Peru - Grapes
Spain - Broccoli
Morocco - Green Beans
Zimbabwe - Mangetout and Sugar Snaps
UK - Carrots, Parsnips, Potatoes
I would guess this is fairly typical.
mjr
Active Member
I think I'd like to see them change the rules so that Clarkson can't use a Trust fund to avoid it. Ideally, so that nobody can, but I'd settle for just Clarkson not being allowed to, because he's an opportunistic nobber who publicly stated he bought a farm to dodge tax and now gets tetchy when interviewers point out that he's a leopard who ate some faces.
Fab Foodie
Legendary Member
Not specifically related to this particular issue, but IIRC, Henry Dimbleby in the 'National Food Strategy' (commissioned and then completely ignored by Johnson), recommended a UK-wide 'Plan for Land' which seems an eminently sensible suggestion. Land for farming, rewilding, housing, solar panels, industrial and retail development, new towns etc etc. A proper strategy for UK farming would be, what land, where, for what crops/animals etc. according to national/health needs. Assistance to change land usage from one type of farming to another should be available. Such a plan should also include the right incentives and remuneration for farmers to be custodians of the land under their control and the ways and means whereby farms can be passed-on for the use of agriculture only. A plan for land should prevent purchase and stockpiling of land for commercial/future exploitation. A plan for land should also ensure a diverse mix of farm types/sizes and ownership and transfer models.
I have some sympathy for farmers as a whole (other than voting for Brexit). Growing crops/raising animals is an unpredictable business, especially so as climate change accelerates. Competition between major retailers on market selling price means that many farmers don't get a fair share of their efforts either - stuck somewhere between the devil and the deep. Furthermore, for many of them their immediate future is very unclear which leads to a lack of investment. The paperwork involved in running a farm is complex too. Whilst I know a few private farms making huge profits, there are very many that barely cover their costs, for whom farming is either the only life they know or is done for love rather than money or are keeping farming alive at the UK's extremities.
We need farmers with a future.
I have some sympathy for farmers as a whole (other than voting for Brexit). Growing crops/raising animals is an unpredictable business, especially so as climate change accelerates. Competition between major retailers on market selling price means that many farmers don't get a fair share of their efforts either - stuck somewhere between the devil and the deep. Furthermore, for many of them their immediate future is very unclear which leads to a lack of investment. The paperwork involved in running a farm is complex too. Whilst I know a few private farms making huge profits, there are very many that barely cover their costs, for whom farming is either the only life they know or is done for love rather than money or are keeping farming alive at the UK's extremities.
We need farmers with a future.
mjr
Active Member
And yet, people still buy most of their "fresh" food (or at least as fresh as it can be when it's done a lap of the country from farm to warehouse to store, or been imported if it saved the supermarket a few ha'pennies) from supermarkets, which causes many other problems too. Wait until some government tries to tackle the supermarket cartel: then we'll see real shoot-stirring and astroturfing that puts this landlord-backed farmer protest to shame!
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PSyiRXIEyc
Years ago working on farms one summer I ended-up driving corn trailers (taking the wheat harvest from combine to farm) and tractor had maybe 30 degrees free play on the steering wheel is you have to turn it 30 degrees to take up any slack before you got to start moving the wheels to actually change direction. Most of route from where fields were being harvested to yard was on public roads. couldn't make any fuss though because it was on girlfriend's father's farm and I was living in room in their farmhouse. Linconshire.
Ian
matticus
Guru
The trouble with that is it's like saying "I have sympathy for blokes called Dave".
They've all got very different circumstances, and ethics! Some very worthy of sympathy, some utter knob-ends. Perhaps what this kerfuffle highlights is how crude a tool tax rules are. (and also how broken the "Free Market" is.)
