17/10/25 Farming minister on sustainable farming scheme and inheritance tax. Council farms in Cornwall.
Description
There will be no U-turn on the government’s plans for inheritance tax for farmers, according to the Farming Minister. Dame Angela Eagle says planned changes will go ahead in next month’s budget, in spite of press reports to the contrary. We also ask her about the Sustainable Farming Incentive. Some farmers are furious because they say the latest scheme, which has only just opened, comes far too late for those farmers who were looking for a replacement for agreements under a previous agri-environment scheme, the Countryside Stewardship scheme, which ends on 31st December.
Several councils in England and Wales are carrying out reviews of their farm estates at the moment, including Powys, Dorset and Cornwall and all week we've been reporting on the issues affecting farms owned by councils. According to the CPRE, the countryside charity, there were 6,700 individual council holdings back in the 1980s, but that number has shrunk by almost two thirds, down to fewer than 2,300 now. Today we hear from a livestock farmer in Cornwall who's concerned about what could happen once Cornwall Council’s consultation comes to an end.
Nearly a quarter of a million trees have been planted across the Outer Hebrides as part of the ‘Western Isles Croft Woodland Project’. It aims to create a mosaic of small woodlands on under-used crofts.
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