There will be many people that will fondly remember Charles Sercombe (ex NFU Livestock Board Chair), who tragically died of cancer two years ago. His son Will took up running as a way of coping with the trauma and he is just about to run the 840 miles from JOG to LE, in 14 days!

A big 🙏 to @LEAF_Farming @OpenFarmSunday @AnnabelOFS @RoyalFamily for the recognition for 20years of hosting this great event. #OFS is so important to engage with our customers & communities. Support of farming neighbours, a good well being tonic. 🙏 @waitrose & Leckford Estate.

Super pleased that my colleague Luke Mills was awarded the Barry Orme Shield for the @BASISRegLtd best student. I know how hard he worked for this so well deserved @BASFcropUK @AgriiUK

If you like classic cars, don't vote for the Green party. They seemingly don't appreciate that the greenest cars are those that last the longest...

Up market view on milling oats on @BBCFarmingToday bears no reality to current market. A local grain marketing group returned a miserly £115.72/t for its committed autumn pool. The oat straw is worth more, better bed the cattle on the grain and sell the straw

So you think it right that the #victimofcrime should be the one who should pay to put that crime right? When the real problem is that fines are so low criminals dump waste because it is such a good way of making money. #justicesubsidisingcriminality

It amazes me why we aren’t getting behind the Lib Dems if they want a fresh start from Tories and Labour. They’ve said everything that makes me think they would do a better job than Reform that would do a deal with the US and Mercosur at the blink of an eye. UK farmers be damned

Exactly what’s happening and will happen further in England, smaller scale but same result, oh and that’s before the impact of IHT on family businesses

Wow!👇 If anyone had any doubts about the real issues about farm profitability, look no further than this film. Rather pertinent to @Minette_Batters report. We won’t see more profitability when the whole job is rigged worldwide! Time to rethink how we sell to the consumer??

I'm a third of the way through the Farm Profitability Review. The most striking graph is this showing slim/ often negative margin. You don't have to be an economist to see that a tax on capital is not affordable. You'd have to be a detached fundamentalist to drive this through..

A government review to tackle unfair practices in the combinable crops supply chain is a real opportunity to address the current imbalance of power and give arable farmers a stronger voice and fairer terms. Please respond to the consultation now. 👉nfuonline.com/updates-and-in…

Actually trolling small businesses now. By “backs” they mean “back small businesses into a corner, and kick them until they expire”

Chancellor spoke of wanting the UK to be “the best place to start up, scale up and stay” and said that “growth begins with the spark of an entrepreneur”. She promised that “if you build here, Britain will back you”. What a word salad of total rubbish everyone is leaving or pulling back investment!

#FamilyFarmTax talking points - a helpful guide: 1. "It's only 500 farms". No, that's APR claims above £1m made in one year, 2021/22. Many more people than that are affected by the rules. The CLA estimated the total number is 70,000 farms. On the Government's own numbers it's about 16,000 (500 x one generation of 32 years). The true figure is that it's likely tens of thousands are affected. 2. "There's a £3m exemption". No, that only applies if both spouses are alive, they can split the farm between them, they amend their wills before dying, both they are their children are in stable marriages (or they are prepared to use complex trust structures). It will not be possible for all couples to achieve this. 3. "Family farms are protected". No, DEFRA says the average family farm is 217 acres. At £11,300/acre that's £2.45m. Together with equipment and a farmhouse, that's likely well over £3m which is the maximum level of the exemption. Farms well below that level are affected and will need to take steps to restructure the way they are organised or face inheritance tax bills when the older generation dies. 4. "How can your income be that low? The price of land must be high because of tax avoiders." The current 100% exemption for land and businesses have applied since 1992. The price of land didn't start to rise significantly until 2005, when the Single Farm Payment was introduced. Tax rules only have a minor affect on land value, which is driven by multiple factors including development, rollover relief, environmental needs, and that they're not making more of it 5. "This only affects the very wealthy and tax avoiders" At one end lifestyle buyers may well be within the £1m exemption per person, at the other the very wealthy can still plan by making gifts. The people who cannot avoid it are family farmers who need to retain access to the farm income. 6. "Wealthy farmers can just pay their fair share of tax" An average farm income is about 1%. Even if you pay over 10 years, the inheritance tax payments will often take all the income, and so part of the farm will need to be sold. This reduces efficiency and makes the farm less viable for the future. What have I missed?

“Family Farm tax” most certainly is not just about farmers it also destroys Family business ☹️ The backbones of Britain are being broken by @UKLabour economics @RachelReevesMP @agricontract @loosecollie @wheat_daddy @TheFarmingForum bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2y…

Thank you for giving me airtime and let’s keep hoping appropriate sentencing will stop #subsidisingcriminality

I have moved from being shocked and disappointed at the Treasury to being angry. I spent some time with an elderly client today who is confused and distressed over what to do, and a huge portion of responsibility for her upset rests with unprofessionalism from the Treasury. Starting from a manifesto that promised not to raise national insurance they then tried to argue that didn’t include employers’ national insurance. Then non-doms, private school fees and the craziness of the IHT changes and pension charges, none of which will actually raise any money if you adjust for the economic impact and uncertainty. All alongside the winter fuel debacle and failure to actually cut welfare costs. And then, within six months of the Budget, came the Treasury Insiders and Well-Placed Sources leaking crazy plans and half-baked ideas to test the political water. Wealth tax, extending PETs, gifts of own income, reductions in pension allowances, caps on pensions, NICs on rental income and dividends, shifting income tax up but extending NICs, capitals gains alignment with income rates, tax hikes for lawyers, accountants and GPs, oil and gas and banking levies, additional costs on landlords and employers, VAT increases, mansion taxes, every awful idea that has ever had economists sitting bolt upright in bed at 3am in a cold sweat, this Treasury has embraced them all, leaked them to the papers and sat back to watch the slow motion catastrophe as their strategy paralyses the markets and dries up investment. In my 30-odd years in practice I have never experienced such a devastatingly incompetent budget process that over the course of 12 months has, in my view, inflicted such horrific damage to business and consumer confidence. Tax should be boring, not front page news every week. It currently feels like an angry school council has been given the economic reigns to the country and it has no idea what it wants to do beyond “Rich people bad”. This morning, I tried to calm down an upset elderly woman and reassure her that as best we could we will help her through this. I place the blame for this awful situation wholly at the door of the Ministers currently in charge of the Treasury. They should be ashamed of themselves.

A STATE'S UNCONSTITUTIONAL ANTI-FARMER PREJUDICE There is nothing in British Law that authorises the Government to permanently reduce the income levels of citizens as a result of levying tax. However, the poorly conceived farm inheritance legislation causes the most efficient medium sized farms to sell land to pay the tax. This reduces unit sizes resulting in a permanent rise in operational costs, lower production capacity and a lower income and margins. As a result farmers are not only called upon to accept a destructive business decapitalisation tax they end up with an operational unit permanently unable to maintain the previous family income. Taking into account the 20% farm IHT and the relative prices of land and low farm returns and the average incomes and house prices in the UK, the fact is that even with a 40% tax, domestic urban households end up paying a far lower proportion of their assets in tax escaping such a ruinous prejudice. On top of this their future incomes remain untouched. This state of affairs represents an unconstitutional act, reflecting a visceral government leadership prejudice against farmers. This shameful act of unabashed prejudice needs to be terminated by withdrawing the proposed farm inheritance tax. Its continuation will guarantee future food price inflation and bankruptcies reducing the very fiscal base or accessible sources of funds the government relies upon for future revenues.

Many of these people with ‘broad shoulders’ will have worked their guts out to get where they are - and now they will be penalised for it. What’s the point in building something if ⁦@UKLabour⁩ are just going to swoop down and take it from you? mol.im/a/15200153