View form a farmer's daughter and smallholder on inheritance and land

Farm and Smallholding valuations are coming under the spotlight as the UK's tax regime is reformed, but not all of us are keeping it in the family says Jane Brooks

- Jane Brooks

Many of our readers know that I'm a farmer's daughter, my late father in his day both owned and rented land. I used to farm and now have a smallholding so I could probably be biased on the subject of keeping a farm in the family. So having noted that, I'd like to look at the generational shift of farming and smallholding. In a perfect world our children would want to follow in our footsteps, learn at our knee and we'd all be living in some sort of 50s eutopia. However, neither of my children are smallholders, or possibly even wish to be, also they will be treated equally when it comes to all my worldly goods, as in my opinion primogeniture is very much a thing of the past. Even so, I have to say that there are some serious problems with the production of food in this country. In common with many other places in the world there does, to me, seem to be an underlying agricultural economy that exploits some of those in the business of producing food.

KEEPING BRITAIN FARMING