By Charles Bourns, broiler grower, Gloucestershire
This week I attended part of the EPIC Conference which from an industry point of view was mostly positive, except for a big dark cloud hanging over it caused by the budget.
I have never known a political event that has halted the industry in its tracks in this way before and this budget seems to have achieved the polar opposite to what the government says it wants to achieve.
The treasury has shown that they just do not understand the make up of farms. They seem to have assumed that all farmers have pensions. A lot do not. So how can a farmer with just the state pension pass the farm over to his son or daughter and retire? If he stays in the farmhouse he has to pay rent and cannot draw an income from the farm as he no longer owns it, and this has to be done seven years before he dies.
It would also seem that a large number of the larger estates are already set up in trusts and have insured against this very problem. So in conclusion it is the family farms that will suffer – like mine – as the farm was my pension.
If you could not go to last week’s mass lobby in London, try and see your local MP and explain to him or her what damage has been done to your business by the budget. On top of the inheritance tax the national insurance increase and new minimum wage will have a real inflationary effect on costs. To have a perfect storm we just need the value of the pound to decrease.
At EPIC there were some other good speakers, one on economics who told us our interest rates were too high, so let’s hope we have some more decreases in the coming months.
We had an interesting presentation from KFC. The only use about 50% British mainly because of their very tight bird weight restriction for their products. Worldwide they are opening a new store every 20 minutes and want to open another 500 in the UK. At present they have 1,020. They are committed to the 30kg stocking density but it will be the present standard bird grown at 30kg and thinned. It was strange that alongside the KFC speakers we had Hubbard speaking about the 30kg slower growing Redbro. All agreed we need to inform the consumer but nobody seems willing to step up.
All in all it was a good conference which as usual stimulates more questions than answers.