Farmers are warning potential strike action in protest at the government’s “awful” budget tax raid last week could rapidly lead to empty supermarket shelves and is actively being considered.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves last week announced changes to rules around inheritance tax as part of a slew of budget announcements designed to raise £40bn via taxation.
The changes relate to amendments to Agricultural Property Relief and Business Property Relief, which will see the existing relief rate of 100% reduced to 50% from April 2026 for farm businesses valued above £1m.
The move means businesses will pay an effective IHT rate of 20% on assets above the £1m mark, having previously paid zero – prompting fury across the farming sector, with NFU president Tom Bradshaw slamming the changes as the “final straw” for many family farms already struggling with soaring costs, tightening margins and extreme weather events.
Even retailers have been taken aback by the policy change, with one senior supermarket source telling The Grocer farmers “have every right to be incandescent. They have been shafted”.
Read more: ‘Shafted’ farmers dismayed by budget tax hikes warn of price increases
The impact of the changes “will be felt over the long term”, they added. “If farms can’t pass down generations without a bill what does the government think will happen?”
The NFU – which met with Defra and the Treasury on Monday to outline the impact the measures could have on the sector – is now planning a “mass lobby” of MPs in Westminster on 19 November, amid a refusal by the Treasury to so-far perform a U-turn on the policy.
Calls for direct action, potentially on the same day with farm machinery and tractors, are also growing across internet forums and on social media, echoing similar protests in March that saw Westminster grind to a halt.
Strikes ‘likely’
But strike action – where farmers either refused to take their produce to market, or refused to engage with third parties such as utility companies over access to their land via so-called wayleaves – is also growing rapidly as a consideration, farmers have told The Grocer, with co-ordinated action having the potential to bring about rapid disruption to both supermarket supply chains and even wider civil society.
“Think of the toilet roll fiasco during Covid and imagine if it was food,” said Gareth Wyn Jones, a north Wales-based livestock farmer who has more than 2.5 million followers on YouTube and almost 70,000 followers on X.
Read more of The Grocer’s budget coverage here
“If we stop taking animals to market it will have serious repercussions for the industry. We now need to show our teeth to the government,” he told The Grocer, slamming the budget as “awful”.
“We don’t want to do that, we want to feed the nation but if government does not support us what else can we do to protect our next generation?” he added.
“These tax changes are the final nail in the agricultural coffin and it’s all building up for food shortages.”
Jones’s comments were echoed by Lincolnshire-based wheat farmer Andrew Ward, who warned farmers “will not take this lying down” after being “trodden over”.
“If it means supermarkets run out of food to make the government realise its mistake, I wouldn’t be against it,” he said, pledging to “keep fighting this”.
Defra said on Monday that “the vast majority of those claiming relief will not be affected by these changes” – a position disputed by the NFU, based on the Treasury’s own analysis.
No comments yet