‘Sitting with their head in their hands’: farm equipment suppliers fear for impact of budget

Graham Cherry, managing director of Cherry Products, at the Midlands Machinery Show at Newark in Lincolnshire. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Observer

A shiny new tractor is pulling a huge orange trailer, while a commentator explains how best to manoeuvre it to tip grain, watched by a group of farmers wrapped up warmly in wellies, coats and bobble hats, some holding spaniels on leads.

Others are checking out the latest models of combine harvesters and crop sprayers, parked on snowy ground at the Midlands Machinery Show, but few seem to be buying, and the changes to inheritance tax for agricultural properties announced in Rachel Reeves’s October budget are never far from anyone’s lips.