A wave of wellies is preparing to pound the streets of Westminster on Tuesday, as groups of farmers bring their anger over the government’s budget changes to inheritance tax to the capital.
For decades, agricultural properties have been passed down tax-free to heirs, but that will change from April 2026, when farms and other business property are brought under the remit of inheritance tax.
The changes mean those inheriting will have to pay 20% of the value of the agricultural and business property above £1m, although this is half the headline 40% rate.
The changes to agricultural property relief (APR) and business property relief (BPR) have stoked more fury in the farming community than perhaps any other recent issue.
It prompted the usually mild-mannered president of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), Tom Bradshaw, to accuse the government of not understanding farming, while warning that the measures will probably push up food prices.
In response, some 1,800 farmers and growers will head to London on Tuesday to hold meetings with their local MPs. It will be a mass lobbying event organised by the NFU aimed at exerting pressure on the government over a policy the union says was designed to target wealthy people who buy up land, but will end up hurting small food producers.
Bedfordshire arable farmer Freya Morgan will be attending, after feeling dismayed by the government’s budget measures, which she considers “a tax on farming”.
Morgan, 60, inherited her parents’ farm after both of them died in the last few years, and grows crops such as wheat, oats and barley. Until the budget on 30 October – as is common in a sector with an ageing workforce – she was planning, in time, to pass the family 450-acre farm on to her 27-year-old son Josh.
“What I am doing, I am doing for him. He has a business and has a passion for it,” she said. “We are asset-rich but cash-poor, and we rely on our assets to be able to raise funds to carry out farming activities.”
Morgan and many others feel let down by the new crop of Labour MPs, many of whom were elected for the first time in July when rural constituencies turned away from the Tories.
They are still clinging to hope that holding parliamentarians’ feet to the fire may force a government U-turn, even as disputes rage between the Treasury and the environment department over how many farms will be affected by the inheritance tax changes.
Anger arising from the budget measures is also threatening splits in the farming community over the best way for food producers to voice their collective discontent.
Five farmers, who came together on budget day in a WhatsApp group chat called APR BPR, are bringing thousands more food producers to London on Tuesday to a rally which they insist is a “complement” to the NFU’s political lobbying.
Herefordshire cereal farmer Martin Williams, one of the organisers, said he had been moved to action after the budget measures became the latest event to affect food producers, following a string of challenges in recent years including extreme weather, Brexit and accompanying trade deals, and subsidy changes, as well as surges in input costs resulting from the war in Ukraine.
“When do we say, ‘hang on a minute’? You can’t just keep coming for agriculture,” Williams said.
Others are preparing for more militant action, among them Welsh farmer Gareth Wyn Jones, whose family has tended the same land for more than 375 years, but in more recent times has amassed a sizeable social media following.
Starting on Sunday, he will go on strike and stop delivering any food for a week. He is calling on food producers who can afford it to join in.
“This is a statement to show government that this could be the future,” he said. “It’s not to starve people, but have them understand what the future is going to look like when there isn’t going to be food there 24/7.”
The gloomy outlook for the rural economy is expected to be felt in Nottinghamshire later in the week when agricultural businesses bring their latest equipment to the Midlands machinery show.
Machinery manufacturers and dealers, along with builders and tradespeople, are expecting to feel the pinch as farmers cut back on investment.
SAM Sprayers, which has built crop sprayers in Norfolk since 1973, is “waiting for the dust to settle”, said director Thomas Sands, whose father, Neal, founded the business.
The overwhelming majority of the firm’s sprayers, costing upwards of £250,000, are sold in the UK. Weeks away from moving into a brand-new factory, Sands is left wondering whether this will be a good long-term investment.
“We’ve not got decisive knowledge yet how this will affect our market,” Sands told the Observer. “A lot of our farmers are very angry.”
