Living and working as a dairy farmer in Shropshire, I’ve witnessed firsthand the fallout from Rachel Reeves’ recent Budget. It has dealt a catastrophic blow to the farming industry, leaving many of us reeling.
Just a year ago, the now Environment Minister Steve Reed promised us there would be no changes to agricultural property relief (APR). Now Labour has taken a bulldozer and smashed the policy to smithereens without any consultation with Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) or the farming community, leaving us scrambling to process the changes and adapt.
The charges Labour have brought in will reshape British farming and our country’s landscape
I come from a family which has farmed in Shropshire for generations and my husband, whom I married in 2007, is himself a sixth-generation dairy farmer. When we met, his dairy unit was an all-year-round calving system, fully housed in winter and grazing in summer.
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