'Unless farming is protected, there'll be food shortages ...we can't keep going'

ONE of the UK's oldest farmers has warned that the Labour Government will be responsible for food shortages across the country unless more is done to protect British agriculture.

- By Eleanor Burleigh

Russell Ling, 96, began working full-time on Grange Farm, in the East Suffolk village of Otley in 1945, carrying on the tradition established by his grandfather who bought the site in 1900.

Today, his limited mobility constrains him to cultivating the field on his tractor and boxing eggs from the arable farm's 250 laying hens every morning.

Tight financial margins have made it a very small-scale operation. There's just Russell and his son Anthony, 59, who does most of the work and took over main ownership around 30 years ago.

Russell, whose wife Rita died in 2012, has lived an impressive life. He served on his local council for 72 years and will receive a British Empire Medal for service to the community in December.

But he has also lived through incredible change in the farming sector, most notably the transition from horse to tractor power in the mid-20th century.

He even remembers watching his father Cecil struggle to compete with foreign grain imports in the 1920s and 1930s and during the rationing of the Second World War.

It’s not lightly, then, that he describes the challenges currently facing the sector as “the worst thing to happen to farming” in his lifetime.

Backlash

The Government will introduce a 20% inheritance tax on agricultural assets worth over £1million in April — a measure that immediately faced a huge backlash.

The Daily Express's Save Britain's Family Farms campaign has led the charge against the changes, which could financially cripple farmers hoping to pass land on to their children.

Russell said: “Once you start selling off farmland, you lose people like us who've been farming all our lives, who know every inch of every field and have it in our blood.

“It's clear that the Government just wants to get as much money as they can from wherever possible. The trouble is, none of them have any sense.