DHF News: March 2025

It has been another very difficult autumn on the farm, but the final load of sugar beet left the farm on Christmas Eve and we are finally all drilled for the autumn crops.

I thought that I would use this quarter’s article to reflect on farming and perhaps help explain why farmers are particularly upset after the Budget.

Over the years of these articles, I am sure that you will appreciate what a risky business farming is and generally how slim our profit margins are. We usually buy the inputs for our crops two years before we sell them, and when we do sell them the price will depend on many variables that are out of our control, such as world market prices and the condition of the crop due to the weather. As part of the European Community we had protection from some of these vagaries. Many farmers voted to leave the EC despite this support because they regarded the system as bureaucratic, dictatorial and inefficient, hoping that a UK government would be better. There is a huge opportunity for the money that had been spent on the EC system to be directed to improving wildlife and most importantly helping the agricultural transformation that will be necessary in a world using less fossil fuel. But we will still need food.

In 2024 we have nearly all had a severely reduced harvest, with crops grown with expensive inputs that are now getting a reduced price. The Budget cut back the last vestiges of the old EC basic payment, added considerably to employment costs and has brought back inheritance tax on family farms and businesses. Partly because of the Inheritance Tax (IHT) exemptions, farmland has become very expensive and while it is quite understandable that there should be a method of stopping people from just buying land to avoid tax I do not believe the current budget measures do this. DEFRA has also announced that the grants for those moving towards sustainable farming were being stopped.

Part of the problem is that we have all become accustomed to very cheap food because it has been subsidized – if the supports are removed and taxes increase, then food needs to be valued at its true cost.

I would finish by saying that Dennington benefits from supportive farming families – the Stewards, the Watts and, if I may include ourselves, the Rouses – who put a lot into the community; family farms are different to institutionally owned farms and I hope that they can survive. Ryan and Evie took a tractor to Stradbroke and Diss raising money for YANA, while Lucas Foster travelled around Wickham Market with over 125 other tractors raising money and supporting the East Anglian Air Ambulance, Suffolk Libraries and the Eastern Community Assistance Team

Let us hope that 2025 brings joy – and here are some photos from 2024.