I’m a young shepherdess – Labour’s tax plans will be the death of many farms

Sheep farmer Naomi Williams-Roberts has warned Labour’s inheritance tax raid will be the “death of many farms” and could have devastating mental health consequences.

The young mother runs a rented 120-acre predominately livestock farm in the South Wales village of Llangybi where she lives with her husband Josh and their four-year-old daughter.

Naomi, 30, also works as a marketing and breed development manager for the Hereford Cattle Society and her husband Josh, 29, as an agricultural builder so they can sustain their part-time operation near the town of Usk.

The NFU has warned tenant farmers like Naomi stand to be impacted by changes to agricultural property relief (APR).

Animal-lover Naomi said she was worried for her daughter’s future under these changes if she wanted to pass on farmland.

She said: “I went to bed last night feeling pretty depressed and wondering what will happen.

“It will be the death of many farms. The next few years will be the measure of it. It could be eye-wateringly bad.

“Let’s see how many farms go onto the market and how many get broken up.”

She went on to highlight how a single farm can provide income for multiple generations – something the APR policy was designed to protect.

She said: “Some farmers have got to the point where they cannot actually farm the land themselves so their children are but farmers do not have pensions set up necessarily in the same way employed people do and so that inter-generational operation helps to create some security.

“Ground is expensive and very desirable. Big companies are buying land for carbon offset and you have big solar farms and that is without getting into development sites.

“So now more than ever ground has a value outside of food production so there is a lot of competition.

“When you look at the value of a farm, it is only about a three-acre farm with some buildings and a farmhouse and you are into a million already and that is considered a small family farm now.

“So if we were to buy a farm in my lifetime, that we would have had to scrimp and save for, in order to give it to our daughter she would have a big fee upon her head if she wants it. So it is unsustainable.”

Naomi pleaded with Labour to “just listen” and “visit sites and take them in” to try and understand what farmers have to deal with.

She said: “When you think of a farmer you think of someone driving a tractor.

“But a farmer is a vet, an accountant, an agronomist, all these different elements. And we do not work 9-5. It is a lifestyle.

“We are not martyring ourselves saying ‘aren’t we great’ because many of us have chosen this path. But we want to feel supported and appreciated by the powers that be.”

The first-generation shepherdess went on to highlight the mental health struggles facing her profession: “Farmers have some of the highest suicide rates and I can see that going up quite frankly out of desperation.

“It is really isolating too – you could spend all day alone as a farmer.”

Naomi suggested Labour did not understand the challenges facing farmers and questioned how many party figures had a “connection to rural society”.

She said: “I do not know a single farmer that feels at all secure. It just seems to be in a downward spiral.

“I grew up in a typically Labour voting, ex-mining area and people I speak to who would normally blindly defend the party are in a bit of a negative mindset about it now.”

She added: “Have they been on a farm? Do they understand what we are up against?”

“When you look at lots of other industries, such as the veterinary industry, it is not just farming that suffers, it is all part of the same ecosystem.”

She also hit out at the “narrow-minded” perspective of the Welsh Labour government for appearing to blame farmers for Brexit.