UK farmers schedule to protest at Parliament over a levy hike they declare will ruin household farms

LONDON — With banners, bullhorns, toy tractors and an angry communication, British farmers are descending on Parliament on Tuesday to protest a hike in inheritance levy that they declare will deal a “hammer blow” to struggling household farms.

U.K. farmers are rarely as militant as their European neighbors, and Britain has not seen large-scale protests like those that have snarled cities in France and other European countries. Now, though, farmers declare they will step up their action if the government doesn’t listen.

“Everyone’s mad,” said Olly Harrison, co-organizer of a protest that aims to flood the street outside Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office with farmers. He said many famers “desire to receive to the streets and block roads and leave packed French.”

Organizers have urged protesters not to bring farm machinery into central London on Tuesday. Instead, children on toy tractors will navigator a march around Parliament Square after a rally addressed by speakers including former “Top Gear” TV host and celebrity farmer Jeremy Clarkson. Another 1,800 farmers schedule to hold a “mass lobby” of lawmakers nearby, organized by the National Farmers’ Union.

Volatile weather exacerbated by climate transformation, global instability and the upheaval caused by Britain’s 2020 departure from the European Union have all added to the burden on U.K. farmers. Many feel the Labour event government’s levy transformation, part of an attempt to raise billions of pounds to pool community services, is the last straw.

“Four out of the last five years, we’ve lost money,” said Harrison, who grows cereal crops on his household farm near Liverpool in northwest England. “The only thing that’s kept me going is doing it for my kids. And maybe a little bit of boost in worth on the land allows you to keep borrowing, to keep going. But now that’s just disappeared overnight.”

The flashpoint is the government’s selection in its monetary schedule last month to scrap a levy shatter dating from the 1990s that exempts agricultural property from inheritance levy. From April 2026, farms worth more than 1 million pounds ($1.3 million) face a 20% levy when the owner dies and they are passed on to the next production. That is half the 40% inheritance levy rate levied on other land and property in the U.K.

Starmer’s center-left government says the “vast majority” of farms – about 75% — will not be affected, and various loopholes cruel that a farming couple can pass on an estate worth up to 3 million pounds ($3.9 million) to their children free of levy.

Supporters of the levy declare it will recoup money from wealthy people who have bought up agricultural land as an resource, driving up the expense of farmland in the procedure.

“It’s become the most effective way for the super-wealthy to avoid paying their inheritance levy,” surroundings Secretary Steve Reed wrote in the Daily Telegraph, adding that high land prices were “robbing youthful farmers of the aspiration of owning their own farm.”

But the famers’ union says more than 60% of working farms could face a levy hit. And while farms may be worth a lot on document, profits are often tiny. Government figures display that profits for most types of farms fell in the year to the complete of February 2024, in some cases by more than 70%. Average farm profits ranged from about 17,000 pounds ($21,000) for grazing livestock farms to 143,000 pounds ($180,000) for specialist poultry farms.

The last decade has been turbulent for British farmers. Many farmers backed Brexit as a chance to get out of the EU’s complicated and much-criticized ordinary Agricultural Policy. Since then, the U.K. has brought in changes such as paying farmers to restore nature and promote biodiversity, as well as for producing food.

Some farmers have welcomed those moves, but many feel goodwill was squandered through missteps by successive governments, a setback of subsidies to keep up with worth rise and recent trade deals with countries including Australia and recent Zealand that have opened the door to cheap imports.

National Farmers’ Union Deputy President David Exwood said the levy hike was “the final straw in a succession of tough choices and challenging situations that farmers have had to deal with.”

The government has “completely blown their depend with the industry,” he said.

The government insists it will not reconsider the inheritance levy, and its political opponents view an chance. The main opposition Conservative event – which was in government for 14 years until July — and the challenging-correct populist event Reform U.K. are both championing the farmers. Some far-correct groups also have backed Tuesday’s protest, though the organizers are not affiliated with them.

Harrison says the demonstration is intended as “a display of togetherness to the government” and an attempt to inform the community “that farmers are food producers, not levy-dodging millionaires.”

“It’s every single sector, whether you’re a landowner or a tenant, whether you’re beef, dairy, milk, cereals, veg, lettuce — you name it, everyone has had a hammer blow from this,” he said.

“Every farmer is losing.”