Anthony Henman, right, and his father Brian on their family farm near Oxford (Image: Rowan Griffiths)
With winter now upon us, arable farmer Anthony Henman will probably get a lie-in tomorrow, not starting work until after 6am, though he’s still likely to be working as evening draws in. With more than 1,200 acres to farm, it goes with the territory.
But if Sir Keir Starmer and his Chancellor Rachel Reeves think the land, and his efforts, makes him rich, and worth clobbering with their new inheritance tax raid, they are very wide of the mark. Like so many of Britain’s farmers working the land to keep the nation fed, if Anthony was in it for the money, he would’ve packed it in long ago.
His family has been farming this corner of Oxfordshire since 1862 and Anthony, 47, is the fifth generation to do so. His father Brian, 77, and mother Carolyn, 75, ran the farm before him and are still partners in the business, though Brian is less able to help as much these days because of his age. Anthony’s wife Emma also works for the business when not looking after their three children, aged 13, eight and five, but much of the workload falls on Anthony, along with the added stress that the Government’s Budget reforms have brought on him and thousands of other farming families.
“We are pretty angry. Angry and worried,” he says. “It’s all a bit raw, hence the protest.”
Being among the many farmers who converged on London was a rare day off for Anthony as he strives to make ends meet.
“How hard I have to work depends on the workload and the time of year,” he explains. “In winter, it’s a lot quieter on an arable farm, but it doesn’t mean you’re not rising early. There are always grain lorries to load and other work to be done and we’ll drop everything to load the lorries to keep the wheels in motion as it helps spread the work.
William Albert Henman and wife Elizabeth, pictured around 1880, who bought the land in 1862 (Image: Henman Family)
“For around a quarter of the year, I’m personally getting up at 4.30am or 5am. You start the day with a plan A and then, quite often, by the end of the day you are halfway through the alphabet because plans change quickly, maybe because of the weather, or maybe because something unexpected happens, or something breaks.
“The whole thing about farming is that everything is so unpredictable. It keeps you on your toes, and sometimes it can get on top of you and be incredibly stressful.”
In peak season, such as drilling time when they plant the crops, or harvest time, it is particularly busy, Anthony explains.
“You probably start at 6am and go through to 10 to 11pm quite often, so that is a hell of a long day. And if rain is expected the next day and you’re desperate to get the ground finished, you are going all through the night until the work is done.”
And the rewards? His family owns 350 acres. At conservative land prices, it would be worth well over £3million. They are tenant farmers for another 600 acres and contract farmers for another 200 acres, working for other owners.
“This is something we can borrow against but there’s only so much money you can borrow and we’re constantly in and out of our overdraft. More often in than out,” he says.“When we need to go and get a piece of machinery, we can’t just go and buy it. We have to borrow the money to buy that machinery because the cash is never in the bank. It’s just not there.
“And yet, for some peculiar reason, we keep getting up every morning and carrying on and doing it, because it’s in the blood.
“I am the fifth generation of the family to be doing this. It is not just a question of, ‘Oh, we’re not making any profit; in fact we have lost money for the past three or four years so let’s just sell up and give up.’ That just does not come into your thinking.”
Carolyn, Anthony, Brian and Emma Henman pictured on their farm near Oxford (Image: Rowan Griffiths)
The latest kick in the teeth from the Government comes just as farmers up and down the land are adjusting to post-EU life. Anthony explains: “The EU subsidies are pretty much gone, so suddenly we have got a £100,000 hole in our cash flow and we have got to fill it.”
The family is trying to take advantage of the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI), turning over a third of the farm to environmental schemes, but they are hard work.
Anthony says: “It is a big hole to fill and there is no guarantee that the SFI is going to still be existence with this latest government. They might just pull the plug on it. Who knows? There is just so much uncertainty.”
The Government insists IHT changes, which will kick in from April 2026, will only affect the 500 wealthiest estates each year, but the NFU and the Country Land and Business Association estimate up to 70,000 farms could be affected.
Analysis by the NFU suggests 75% of commercial farms of more than 50 acres would be hit and it’s the confusion that is so stressful for Anthony and others.
He says: “We’re getting conflicting reports – that we are going to get hit with 20% IHT, which would mean we would have to sell the farm, or parts of it, to pay for that because we just don’t have the cash in the bank.
“Then the Government is telling us it won’t affect us because we can get a certain amount off… there are ways around it. We need to see our accountant and get professional advice and clarification, but I don’t think it has been well thought out at all.
“I can’t see how we are going to get the reliefs they say we can. This whole thing about millionaire farmers… there are a lot of small farmers, scraping by, who might have a few acres and a small house and a few buildings and it doesn’t take much to be worth more than a million on paper. There will be an awful lot of small farmers affected and I think the statistics the Government is using are fundamentally wrong.”
Anthony fears that if he had to sell land to pay IHT he wouldn’t have a business worth continuing.
Anthony’s grandfather, Ted Henman (Image: Rowan Griffiths )
He already has to rent out farm buildings to other firms – “diversification income” – and if farm land was sold off and the diversification income exceeded 50% of the farm income, it would leave the family liable for full IHT.
“[Tory leader] Kemi Badenoch has vowed she would reverse the Government’s new rules,” he says, “and that would be great, but if that does not happen, the farm is going to be diluted so much over generations that the family will end up with nothing.”
And it’s not just family farmers who would suffer, but the whole country.
“There is so much volatility in the world at the moment, with wars and weather issues, and we, the UK, are 60% self-sufficient in food and it would only take a war and suddenly where are we going to import the rest of our food from? We’d be screwed.
“The way I see it, if we [family farmers] have to sell land to pay this tax, some big corporates will buy up the land, and not necessarily for food production. They could buy it for biodiversity, or carbon offsetting, all sorts of things. There could be a huge increase in things like solar panels as the Labour Government has already approved some quite substantial solar farms.
“There will also be more houses. And less UK-produced food, obviously, which would put us in a very bad position – if we can’t produce the quantity of food domestically and there is a war or a natural disaster, we are going to go hungry at some point.”
With HIS father ageing, Anthony has taken on a full-time employee this year. But he says any reduction in family farms to pay IHT would also cost jobs because the businesses would not be able to support them. So does he fear there will not be a sixth generation of his family looking after the land?
Anthony says of his children: “It will be entirely up to them. Even at 13, my son sees the pressure and has occasionally suggested he doesn’t necessarily want to farm as he’s seen how difficult and stressful it is.”
So what message does he have for Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves?
“You have made a very big mistake, and you should reconsider the changes you have made to IHT, for the sake of farming, the beautiful country we live in, food security and for the good of the UK.”
Whether the Prime Minister and his Chancellor are listening remains to be seen.
