The subject of family farms rose to prominence during the 2024 budget, particularly in debates over inheritance taxes and the financial pressures on farmers.

Photo: The Hue's family, The Farm at Avebury
A common belief emerged that farming is just another business where ownership doesn’t matter - revealing how little so many of us understand about the farming industry. For too many, farming is a distant concept: picturesque fields dotted with sheep or tractors, far removed from the average supermarket trip.
But farming isn’t just a romantic image or a fringe concern; it’s the backbone of what we eat and how we live. Despite this, public awareness of farming’s challenges, intricacies, and importance feels thin at best.
During the debates, many politicians and commentators argued that farmers are “wealthy” and should pay inheritance tax, even if that means selling land. This facile argument overlooks something critical: farming isn’t just a transaction. It’s an industry built on community, passion, and expertise. And when family farms are forced to sell - whether to pay taxes or simply to survive - something irreplaceable is lost.
This debate isn’t just about economics; it’s about quality, choice, and the food on our plates. To understand why family farms matter, we must look beyond the fields to what makes small enterprises so different from the corporate giants - and what we lose if they disappear.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I part-owned a microbrewery in London. We started with a passion for craft ale, winning awards and acclaim, but we struggled to sell beyond our pub on the King’s Road. Pubs were owned by big chains uninterested in small brewers. Consumers were fed bland, mass-produced beer, and eventually, we closed due to lack of opportunity.
Fast forward 20 years, and the market has transformed. Nearly 2,000 craft breweries now thrive in the UK. The reason? Consumer demand. People didn’t want bland beer - they wanted quality and choice. And this is the difference between large- and small-scale production. Large operations prioritise economies of scale, cost-cutting, and profits, backed by advertising campaigns to reassure customers that buying from big brands is good. But these campaigns often mask what’s being sacrificed. Small producers, by contrast, thrive on quality, passion, and community. They must excel because they can’t hide behind marketing and glossy campaigns. If you aren’t good, no one buys your stuff. Their focus, therefore, isn’t shareholder profits; it’s delivering something meaningful to their customers.
This brings us back to why family farms matter. Every time a family farm is forced to sell, a little bit of that quality and passion is lost. The chances are, the land will be bought by large operators or someone intent on scaling up. And, if this happens often enough and for long enough, we will end up with a small number of mega-farms run by accountants in suits based in offices hundreds of miles away. Yes, these farms will keep food on our plates - assuming the land isn’t sold for solar farms - backed by advertising reassuring us that “Big Agriculture” is good. But it won’t be. There will be less choice, less passion, and less connection to the food we eat. And it just won’t taste as good. Worst of all? By the time we notice, it will be too late to turn back. Discover how WeFarmShop champions Great British farmers and small producers - download our app today! Available on the App Store and Google Play.
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