The real threat to British farmers… and it isn’t the ‘tractor tax’

Letters to the editor: our readers share their views. Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

I am dismayed by the protesting farmers’ sense of entitlement and pleading for special treatment (“Farmers descend on Westminster in fury over tractor tax”, Tuesday 19 November).

Most farms won’t be affected by Labour’s changes to inheritance tax – and the 500 farm estates that will can easily deal with the impact with a bit of forethought and planning.

Like crop rotation and adapting to a change of weather, it should not be beyond a competent farmer.

For as long as I can remember, farmers have complained of poverty and poor pay. Yet, in my opinion, many are living the good life, driving £250,000 tractors and with a fleet of £50k-100k vehicles at their disposal.

Farmers would be better off protesting about the microplastics polluting their land from the sludge passed on to them by water companies. The real threat to farms is in their fields, not their accounts or wills.

And rather than threaten consumers with food shortages, why not sort out your contracts with the big supermarkets and get yourselves a better rate? That will pay your tax bill – should you even get one.

Michael Mann

Shrewsbury

Zero sympathy for our farmers

Farmers protesting in Westminster are warning of food shortages ("The tractor tax means we’re sleepwalking into food shortages", Tuesday 19 November). What utter nonsense. What are they going to do – go on strike?

The London protest against the “tractor tax” is one funded by obscenely wealthy people who don’t want to pay any tax at all.

Only the richest 4 per cent of people ever pay inheritance tax. Even after Labour’s changes, the tax due on a £3m house inherited from your parents would be £800,000, whereas tax on a £3m farm inherited from your parents would be… nothing!

Geoffrey Brooking

Havant, Hampshire

Wood, for the greater good

It’s not just farmers who are subject to the new inheritance tax rules – forestry is, too.

The country needs home-grown wood, but the only reason anyone would invest in forestry is the tax-free inheritance – because a forest is nothing but expense for 40 years: no income at all for decades, and then not a spectacular one at that!

Is anyone in government aware of this? Forestry should be a special case in this instance.

Edward Sturmer

Tring, Herts

‘Movember’ spawned a monster

We are more than halfway through “Movember” – the month designated to publicly addressing men’s health issues – but I, for one, have heard or read little about it.

Yet the social ramifications of men refusing to open up and ask for help, due to their fear of being perceived by their peers as weak or non-masculine, exist all around us (“One in five men over 50 ‘hardly ever’ thinks about their mental wellbeing”, Thursday 14 November).

Various mainstream news and social media platforms state the obvious, that society must “open up” and “form a common dialogue” when it comes to progressively addressing the challenge of men’s mental health.

But if anything is to truly change, we must eliminate the cynical attitudes towards the cause.

Frank Sterle Jr

White Rock, Canada

Forgive and forget

JD Vance becoming vice-president-elect, despite him having previously compared his own boss to Hitler, could be good news for David Lammy.

Donald Trump may yet overlook the foreign secretary having previously called the US president-elect “a racist and KKK/neo-Nazi sympathiser” (“Keir Starmer stands by foreign secretary who called Donald Trump a ‘neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath’”, Thursday 7 November). After all, people on his own team have said worse!

Trevor Lyttleton

Hampstead Heath, London