\n<\/p>\n
F<\/span>ew symbols were more potent than the wooden coffin bearing the inscription \u201cRIP British agriculture, 30th October 2024\u201d that greeted Labour\u2019s environment minister at the annual Oxford farming conference.<\/p>\n It marked the date of Rachel Reeves\u2019s first budget, when she announced plans to levy inheritance tax on farms. For the chancellor\u2019s cabinet colleague Emma Reynolds, it underlined the anger among Britain\u2019s farmers.<\/p>\n Christopher Marchment brought the coffin, along with his working cocker spaniel Grouse, from his arable farm in Hampshire to the annual gathering to call for the tax to be abolished.<\/p>\n <\/span>Christopher Marchment: \u2018If people are out protesting like this, the government should think there\u2019s something drastically wrong with their policies.\u2019<\/span> Photograph: Joanna Partridge\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Not that Reynolds needed reminding. Since becoming environment secretary in September\u2019s reshuffle, the former financial services lobbyist has faced a cacophony of rural outrage, including the tractor horns that played a soundtrack to the Oxford event.<\/p>\n The government\u2019s pre-Christmas U-turn on the inheritance tax changes for farms, which raised the threshold at which estates are taxed, have been welcomed by groups including the National Farmers\u2019 Union (NFU) and the Country Land and Business Association. However, they have done little to quell some food producers\u2019 anger.<\/p>\n Marchment said he knew of two farmers who had killed themselves because of the planned introduction of inheritance tax for agricultural assets and other business properties worth more than \u00a31m.<\/p>\n <\/span>The government\u2019s U-turn on the inheritance tax for farms has done little to quell some food producers\u2019 anger.<\/span> Photograph: Andrew Matthews\/PA<\/p>\n \u201cThey wanted to pass their farms on,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need food production in this country. If people are out protesting like this, the government should think there\u2019s something drastically wrong with their policies.\u201d<\/p>\n One tractor, adorned with a cardboard cow, urged: \u201cMoov over Labour, it\u2019s time to go\u201d, while other signs read: \u201cLabour \u2013 killing our countryside\u201d and \u201csheaves not Reeves\u201d.<\/p>\n Derek Pearce, a third-generation arable farmer from Buckinghamshire, said the government did not understand the countryside.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are literally going after everything rural, whether it\u2019s rural business, pubs are closing, business rates are going up, or farming. They\u2019re going after the fishing, the shooting, everything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n <\/span>Derek Pearce says the government does not understand the countryside.<\/span> Photograph: Joanna Partridge\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Reynolds, who replaced Steve Reed in September, was on a charm offensive, telling the conference: \u201cThis government is serious about partnership with your sector.\u201d<\/p>\n Thanking farmers for clearing snow from roads in recent days, she called them \u201cthe heart of our national life for what you produce\u201d.<\/p>\n Reynolds said Labour\u2019s climbdown on inheritance tax, which increased the threshold at which inherited farmland is taxed from \u00a31m to \u00a32.5m, was a sign ministers had listened.<\/p>\n The tax had been labelled a \u201cfamily farm tax\u201d by critics and triggered protests around the UK, with farmers arguing it would prevent many of them from passing on their farms to their children.<\/p>\n While Reynolds was at the conference, her cabinet colleagues were preparing to announce yet another policy U-turn, this time over changes to business rates for pubs after a wave of criticism from embattled publicans, particularly in rural areas, who have taken to banning their local Labour MPs.<\/p>\n Reynolds \u2013 who represents the constituency of Wycombe in Buckinghamshire that she described as rural and home to 89 farms \u2013 will face an uphill fight to win back the trust of food producers, who were little enamoured with her predecessor and accused him of betrayal over the inheritance tax.<\/p>\n <\/span>Emma Reynolds was on a charm offensive at the conference and thanked farmers for clearing snow from roads in recent days.<\/span> Photograph: Andrew Matthews\/PA<\/p>\n She told journalists: \u201cAs a government we truly care about rural Britain, we are the party with more rural representation than any of the others.\u201d However, there will be no further concessions: \u201cFrom our point of view that\u2019s it, I\u2019m afraid.\u201d<\/p>\n Reynolds said she knew many people in rural communities decided to vote for Labour at the last election. \u201cWe took the rural wall in 2024. We have got 136 rural or semi-rural seats. That is a huge representation in parliament and I have conversations with those MPs week-in, week-out. There is huge growth potential in rural communities that is in farming but in lots of other areas as well, tourism, hospitality.\u201d<\/p>\n Tom Bradshaw, the NFU president, said: \u201cThe government has got to make farmers and rural communities feel valued, and at the moment farmers don\u2019t know where the goalposts are. Does domestic food production matter to the government or not?\u201d<\/p>\n One tweed-jacketed attender, who did not want to give his name, had a more critical assessment. Ministers \u201chandled the whole inheritance tax thing terribly\u201d, he said. \u201cA lot of rural communities won\u2019t vote Labour again, even if the alternative isn\u2019t much better. They were burned by them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Few symbols were more potent than the wooden coffin bearing the inscription \u201cRIP British agriculture, 30th October 2024\u201d that greeted Labour\u2019s environment minister at the annual Oxford farming conference. It marked the date of Rachel Reeves\u2019s first budget, when she announced plans to levy inheritance tax on farms. For the chancellor\u2019s cabinet colleague Emma Reynolds,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40896,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[7072,21927,5185,6428,764,134,2942,101,14051],"class_list":{"0":"post-40895","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-anger","9":"tag-dampen","10":"tag-farmers","11":"tag-farming","12":"tag-inheritance","13":"tag-labour","14":"tag-rural","15":"tag-tax","16":"tag-uturn"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}