Now is not the time to turn our backs on family farms

With soaring costs already biting hard, the last thing farmers need is the 'tractor tax', writes Lib Dem leader Ed Davey

- Ed Davey

British farmers are the best in the world because of our tradition of family farming. Family farming has tethered agricultural practices in the UK to the skills which have long guaranteed British quality food, produced to high standards and with care for our natural world.

But now the farmers feeding our country are sometimes barely able to afford to feed their own families. For far too many, the sums simply don’t add up.

In the last year alone, 8,100 UK farms closed their doors – equal to one in 25 of all farms in the country. Without these family farms, the wider rural community cannot prosper; our food security, our countryside, our natural environment and our cultural heritage are all supported by family farming.

Often ignored in Whitehall, where rural communities are misunderstood, family farms are also a massive part of our clean energy future and give us a fighting chance against climate change.

I know how worried farmers are about their incomes and I am desperately worried about the tragic rise in suicides in farming communities. There is a wider issue of mental health crisis in farming, and many farmers rightly feel the latest tax on family farms comes at the worst possible time.