Is this the end of the family farm?

Farmers are threatening to pour buckets of manure over Westminster and bring the country "to its knees" after Rachel Reeves announced cuts to tax relief on agricultural estates.

Angry campaigners claim that the changes announced in the Budget marked "the end of family farms", but some tax experts said only the wealthiest would be affected.

What did the commentators say?

From April 2026, the government will slash tax relief on farms worth more than £1 million by 50%, meaning businesses will "pay an effective" inheritance tax rate of 20% on such assets, said The Grocer.

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A £1 million threshold is estimated to be the equivalent of 67 acres. The average UK farm size is 217 acres, meaning the "vast majority of ordinary family farms" will now have to pay inheritance tax, said James Heale in The Spectator. So it's no wonder the farming community has reacted with "near-unanimous fury".

Reactions have indeed been dramatic. Jeremy Clarkson said farmers "have been shafted" by the changes, while fellow TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp went one step further, claiming Reeves has "f****d all farmers".

By "clobbering" farmers with its "metropolitan mindset", Labour proved that it "doesn't understand the countryside", said farmer and author Jamie Blackett in the Daily Mail. "Farming is hard enough," he said, with "weather, plant and animal diseases, turbulent world markets and high interest rates" to contend with. Reeves' plan "could at a stroke spell the end of the family working farm".

But "for all the political backlash", the "vast majority" of family farms will still not pay a levy because only the "richest estate owners will be affected", said The Guardian, citing analysis by the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation. Its data shows that, of the 1,300 estates per year who claimed agricultural relief between 2018 and 2020, only 200 per year claimed more than £1 million. It is "not the classic working farmers" who will bear the brunt of the changes, said Arun Advani, the centre's director.

"The updated relief can in fact be even more generous for true family farms." A married couple can split their shared farm in two for inheritance purposes. In such a scenario, a farm worth £3 million "qualifies for £2 million of agricultural property relief, plus another £500,000 for each partner", and could thus incur no inheritance tax. Those who inherit will be allowed to spread any cost over 10 years, so even farms worth £5 million might in practice only pay inheritance tax of less than 1% a year.

What next?

Farmers from across the UK are to "converge on London" for a rally against the government's agricultural policies, said Farmers Weekly. After an "emergency meeting" yesterday, the National Farmers Union vowed "to get farmers' voices heard". Efforts are also under way to organise "gilet-jaune-style" protests, said Guido Fawkes, and rural sources told the site that we could expect to see "buckets full of sh*t getting dumped on parliament" before too long.

Dan Willis, a farmer from Berkshire, called for a "mass protest", telling the BBC that if farmers "stop selling produce just for one day", it would bring the country "to its knees".