Farmers worried if they will make it to 2026 amid ‘cashflow crisis’, says NFU | Farming

Farmers are warning of a “cashflow crisis” that has left many in the agricultural sector wondering how they will make it to the end of the year.

At the annual meeting of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) of England and Wales, its president told members that “bad policy, geopolitics and unprecedented weather” had left some sectors of UK farming “in the worst cashflow crisis ever”.

“Many farmers genuinely worry about whether they will make it to the end of 2025,” Tom Bradshaw said at the event in London on Tuesday, which was dominated by the dispute with the government over planned changes to inheritance tax (IHT) for agricultural properties.

The cashflow warning comes after years of rising costs, labour shortages and post-Brexit changes to support payments that have buffeted the UK agricultural sector. Income fell for all types of farm in England between 2023 and early 2024, according to the most recent figures from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

Bradshaw criticised the government’s IHT move as “cruel” and “morally wrong and economically flawed”, adding he had had received “hundreds” of letters from NFU members worried about the impact of the tax changes on elderly farmers.

Ministers have said a move to bring farms and other business property into IHT from April 2026 is necessary to help fix public services. They have also insisted that a quarter of estates, valued at more than £1m, would be liable to pay IHT at a reduced 20% rate, rather than the standard 40%, meaning it would mostly affect wealthy landowners.

However, farming groups have disputed the government’s figures and warned the measures will endanger domestic food security, stifle investment and cause hardship to family farms.

A speech by the environment secretary, Steve Reed, drew boos and groans from delegates, while it was also interrupted by protesters who unfurled a banner, reading: “How high up your ‘pecking order’ is eating Steve?”

During a tetchy exchange with delegates, Reed was told by farmers that some elderly relatives were considering ending their lives before the new policy takes effect in April 2026.

David Passmore, a cattle, sheep and arable farmer from Wallingford in Oxfordshire, whose widowed 90-year-old mother is still an active farmer, told Reed that she and others were “wishing their life away” as a result of tax changes. Reed responded that he was “very sorry”, but could not “comment on individual circumstances”.

“It was not an answer of empathy or compassion. He could have said he understood,” Passmore said afterwards. “It wasn’t about the individual case, I was the carrier of the message for thousands of others.”

Bradshaw told reporters he doubted whether British farmers would benefit from changes to public sector procurement rules, aimed at getting more British food into hospitals, schools and prisons. The public sector will have a target of sourcing at least half of all food from farms with the highest welfare standards, which should benefit British growers and food producers.

Reed announced at the conference he would set up a new “farming profitability department” within Defra and would begin shaping a 25-year roadmap through workshops with the farming industry.

He also suggested that trade deals featuring bee-killing pesticides would be looked at again, with the view to banning the import of products treated with neonicotinoids, which were last month banned for use in the UK.

These pesticides were banned by the EU but had been provisionally allowed for use every year since Brexit, until this year when Labour ended their emergency use.

He told reporters: “Neonicotinoids it is an unusual situation in that it has been banned for a number of years, but every year the previous government gave exemptions. We are not doing those exemptions. We now need to go back to the trade deals, because it needs to line up to our commitments to not undercutting British farmers.”

Reed also made a fresh commitment that food produced to a lower standard than that in the UK would not be permitted for import in any future trade deals. However, he said he would not be ripping up the controversial Australia and New Zealand agreements which allow the import of beef and lamb agreed in 2021 under the then trade secretary, Liz Truss.

“But the kind of things the previous government agreed to in that trade deal, we have ruled out in trade deals that will be negotiated,” he said.

Defra is expected to make an announcement related to the wild release of beavers later this week. Bradshaw said this concerns farmers as the rodents can flood their land and that if they are released, the government should allow beavers to be shot. He said: “If beavers end up in the wrong place, then that lethal control has to be part of being able to have that species reintroduced more widely.”

question – tax bill £1.2m on death of his mother. Annual profit is £60k asking what they shoudl sell – crops machinery or animals