Attacks are leaving farmers undervalued

HOW bad is life for farmers at the moment? Based on the chat I had on the phone last week with a livestock farmer in the uplands, well away from the Westcountry, my conclusion would be "pretty dire"

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I got a no-holds-barred insight into the pressures the men and women who feed us and manage our landscapes are facing.

While some of the issues my farmer friend raised were specific to his own circumstances, many will apply widely across the agricultural sector, several parts of which are undoubtedly in crisis, including here in the South West.

Our chat began innocuously enough, focusing on the weather, as chats with farmers almost inevitably do. But it was soon clear that prob lems were building to boiling point, thanks, not so much to any single policy change or market-driven challenge, but to the culmination of problem after problem raining down with seemingly no way of escaping their impact.

The headline challenges are well known. The ending of inheritance tax exemptions from April next year loom large for any family farmer. The removal of land-based subsidy support and the summary scrapping of the Sustainable Farm Incentive, one of the measures designed to replace it, is both a financial blow and undermines farmers' trust in the Government.

Then there are the commercial pressures, with rising input costs and, in some sectors, falling or static prices for commodities, along with the threat of imports undercutting farm produce prices in the UK.