Employee smiling at a fresh produce store (Image: Getty)
Anyone who has young children will have gone through the tractor-obsession stage.
Whether boy or girl, an early interest in farming seems universal.
Tractor Ted, Peter Rabbit and Old MacDonald, farming is built into the fabric of our culture.
As the chair of the Farm Retail Association and owner of Yolk Farm in North Yorkshire, I worry that the Government’s recent Budget will spell an end to UK food production.
Perhaps children’s story books are the only place we will find farming in the future: in a rose-tinted version of the past.Farming was already hard, with unpredictable weather and global cost challenges.
The average profit margin in a UK farm is just 0.5%.
With the recent changes to IHT reform, many more farms than the Government have anticipated will have to sell 20% of assets or stock each generation, rendering them even more unviable.
Many of our members have diversified away from traditional farming into more commercial enterprises like shops and restaurants for this reason.
We are the entrepreneurial farmers who have gone direct to consumer to protect the price of our products in a world where supermarkets pay little more than the cost of production.
And we are a flourishing industry. But the Budget challenges us in further ways, with National Insurance hike, wage increases, and a reduction on business rates relief.
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Farmers are a hardy sort and being a farmer is more than a job – it’s an identity.
For those of us who have diversified, we will rise to the challenge and weather the storm, and hopefully come out stronger as a result.
We have no other alternative, as we are the guardians of UK food production and security. We are the places people come to learn about where their food comes from. To lose that would be a real tragedy.
Emma Mosey is chairwoman of the Farm Retail Association