On Thursday 6 February, the Farms and Estates team hosted their annual professionals' breakfast meeting to discuss topical issues affecting the farming and rural industries. As well as the usual topics such as cloud accounting, agricultural property relief, capital gains tax and entrepreneurs’ relief we also included a few interactive polls for guests to take part in.
Among the questions considered, we looked at what proportion of farming and landowning clients had considered the impact of the Agriculture Bill, diversification and changing demand for meat on farm incomes. Clearly the impact of the Agriculture Bill will take time to filter through, but 100% of professionals surveyed thought that their clients had looked at diversification with 57% of clients having considered diversification to a significant extent. The implication of this may be that further diversification to regain income lost from changes in the Agriculture Bill may not be that easy for many. 87% of people voted that their clients or contacts had expressed some concern that meat consumption may fall in the future.
If you would like to discuss anything mentioned or if you have any questions, please contact one of the team below.