Florence Harris, eight, with her father Rob on the family farm in Shropshire (Image: Rowan Griffiths)
Despite a succession of Labour MPs yesterday lining up to back ’s inheritance tax raid on farming, eight-year-old Florence Harris remains defiant.
The youngster was pictured on the Daily Express front page sitting on a children’s tractor brandishing a placard reading: “When I grow I up I WANTED to be a FARMER” during the industry protest outside Westminster last month.
And now she has spoken out powerfully on behalf of farming families up and down the country who are deeply worried about whether children like herself and her younger brother James will be able to carry on in the vital profession.
When asked what message she would send to those in charge of the country, Florence told us: “All I want is for farmers to feel appreciated. At the moment politicians are just not thinking things through clearly. If this happens, the Government will be a bit annoyed because then there will be less food or chocolate available.”
When Florence was four, she helped her father Rob to load cattle from their beef farm in Shropshire onto a lorry for the short trip to the abattoir, and while Rob collected some paperwork from the farmhouse, the lorry driver asked young Florence what she wanted to be when she grew up.
“A ballet dancer and a horse rider,” she told him.
“Don’t you want to be a farmer?” he laughed.
“I already am,” she replied, enthusiastically.
Four years on, Florence still loves to get up early to help her father on the 120-acre property in Orleton, Shrops, that has been in Rob’s family for three generations. Florence’s four-year-old brother James is also a keen farmer-in-the-making: His particular passion is tractors.
“Farming is the whole of my life and I’ve always wanted to work on the farm. I like the friendly cows, and I like helping Daddy,” says Florence.
Florence on the cover of the Daily Express last month after Westminster protests (Image: Daily Express)
The Daily’s Express crusade to Save Britain’s Family Farms has shown how farming families will be ruined by the proposed policy of applying Inheritance Tax of 20% on farms worth more than £1million.
The day after 45,000 farmers marched on London to protest against new inheritance tax rules that many believe will decimate the industry within a generation, Florence’s photograph appeared on our front page. Sitting on a large toy tractor, in plaits and with a contemplative expression, the little girl’s slogan summed up the plight of the future of farming.
For if the Government gets its way, Florence, James, and generations of British children yet to be born, will never get to work the land that their families have tended for generations.
The planned changes to inheritance tax law, will mean tens of thousands of family farms are swept into a death tax that may make it unviable for their descendants to keep farming, after land and assets are sold off to cover the controversial taxation.
In the case of the Harris family farm, Rob believes that inheritance tax due upon his death may make it unviable for his children to continue farming it.
“I’ve always assumed that Florence and James will be able to follow me as the fourth generation,” he says, a measured and calm man whose demeanour doesn’t reveal his emotions.
“I know nothing other than farming, and as a little farm boy I never wanted to be inside. Like James, I was always desperate to be on a tractor.”
He points out that a farm is a community resource.
“It doesn’t just end at the farm gates. The local schools come for visits, and we send them away with good beef to make burgers, showing them the process of quality food production.
“We clear the school car park of snow, and all the silt in the town after floods a few years ago. We fill the tractor full of balloons for the school fete, and we raise money at Christmas by taking Father Christmas around the village.
“With the inheritance tax thresholds we would have to sell land, and this could make it unviable for Florence and James to continue with the farm.
Florence and her little brother, James, four, on the family farm in Shropshire (Image: Rowan Griffiths)
“It is infuriating that this government doesn’t take food security seriously. It makes you wonder why you’re bothering; the margins are already so low.”
For Florence and James this choice, when it comes, will prove devastating.
“At the age of four, Florence already knew she wanted to be a farmer,” says her mother Katie, 35, who grew up on a neighbouring farm before marrying Rob, the farmer next door.
During times, Florence would get herself up, at the age of four, to be dressed and ready to help Rob voluntarily. He says: “Before my alarm had even gone off at 5am, she was dressed and ready. Now, if you go to work at the weekends without her, she gets upset.”
And there is always a favourite cow. “When I was little I even used to ride my favourite,” enthuses Florence.
She tells me that working animals are not given names, but four years later, she still remembers her ear tag number. “It was 1548,” she says. “She was really quiet, and she would come for cuddles. Her hair was really curly and you could brush it.
“I feel incredibly lucky, because every time we have a new set of cows I go up to them and make new friends. I like them when they are baby cows, but also in the big shed where we can make friends for a year while they are growing up. I go and see them after school.”
Says Katie: “Florence loves the animals and James is the first one climbing up on the tractor as soon as he hears a tractor start. It’s really nice that the children enjoy different aspects and this lovely upbringing on a family farm is all you could hope for them. We hoped they would be able to do the same with their children, if they have them.
“But as a parent I feel it’s really important that both children do activities away from the farm, as farming, however old or young you are, can be very lonely and isolating. It’s important to have a good group of friends for support.”
Rob and Katie Harris with Florence and James and their grandmother, Di (Image: Rowan Griffiths)
I ask Florence, who also attends dancing classes, what she most enjoys about life on a working farm. “I like fixing stuff, like the straw chopper,” she says. “I held a spanner while Daddy loosened the nut, and we fixed it. It was very satisfying.
“I also like helping Daddy feed the cows. I get a shovel and push the food up so they can eat it.”
James is also showing similar fascination for the family business, and also likes using the shovel.
Says Katie: “When he awoke early one morning this week at 3am, James and I ended up having a conversation about crop rotation and why granddad grows different crops every year.
“They already have so much knowledge about farming and what we do here.”
The family are quietly heartbroken about the impact of taxation on both children’s potential futures. “James’s little face when he hears the tractor start up…” says Rob.
Katie, who works as a freelance book keeper and also runs the local Brownie pack, says: “The children are not sat in front of TV and iPads, they are outside. They are practical kids with good common sense; we are very lucky.”
But of course, this is not so much luck as opportunity. And these are opportunities that will be denied future generations of family farmers if the Government doesn’t reverse its controversial policy.
This is something that Florence has been considering deeply in the past few weeks since
the family trip to London for last month’s farmer’s march.
“We couldn’t get out of the drive due to the snow, so my uncle picked us up on a tractor,” says Florence excitedly. “The bus broke down at Swindon, so we had to get a taxi and a train to go to London, and then the Tube. Then Uncle Chris realised he’d left all his bags in the taxi!” (They were returned a week later).
The family made it with just ten minutes to spare at the start of the children’s pedal tractor run in central London. Before the event, farming parents had to fill in a form requesting a tractor for their child to ride and submitting their address so the toys – sponsored by Claas and JCB – could then be donated to a children’s hospice in the area where the rider came from.
“We only just made it in time,” says Florence who says it was “amazing” to see her photograph on the front page of the Daily Express the next day. So, at eight, what does she understand of the issue underlying the march, and her parents’ determination that they would all be there to support their farming community? Quite a lot, as it turns out.
“The Government want to stop our family farms and make us pay a lot of money we can’t afford,” says Florence. How does this make her feel?
“Angry. Because I really, really want to farm when I’m older.”
When I ask why, she says: “It’s all the cows and the other animals; being outside; getting to play with them; the environment.
“I am most definitely going to be a farmer,” she concludes.
But her ambition became ever more challenging this week with the removal of key farming grants.
Says Rob: “The government have just pulled all the grants; the only scheme left open now is to plant trees that aren’t going to produce food, so this is a further blow on top of the inheritance tax changes.
“What has upset a lot of people is that the announcement of more than £500million that will be going in aid to foreign farmers. I think they are doing it to get produce grown cheaper than we can in this country, to get the prices down.
“They don’t take food sustainability seriously in the UK. Already, we would run out of food on August 14 if we only ate British produce from January 1. So where would Christmas dinner come from?” I wonder what else young Florence wants readers of this newspaper to know.
She thinks for a moment and says she wants farmers to “feel appreciated”.