Farmers are advised to diversify, but they also have to deal with increasing taxes, land seizures, and policy reversals. When stability is continuously threatened, how can rural enterprises make plans for the future? The government must offer the stability required to invest in, expand, and maintain land-based enterprises if it genuinely wants farmers to be resilient.
Environment Secretary Rt Hon Steve Reed OBE MP, at the 2024 CLA Conference, emphasized that economic stability is crucial for businesses to plan, budget, and grow effectively. He acknowledged that farmers and rural businesses need financial predictability to make long-term investment decisions, especially in an era of subsidy reform.
“We were shocked by the size of the financial black hole we were left to fill. I’m sorry that some of the action we had to take shocked you in turn, but stable finances are the foundation of the economic growth needed.”
However, MP Victoria Atkins’ recent statement directly challenges this pretence of stability:
“The agricultural policy of this government can be summarised in three sentences:
- They will halt any farming and environmental scheme on which farmers rely, without warning, without consultation and using criteria they have never before defined.
- The state will seize their farmland, through the compulsory purchase orders recently announced in the planning bill.
- If families have managed to cling onto their farms despite all of this, then Labour will tax them for dying.”
At the 2025 Oxford Farming Conference, Reed reinforced the need for diversification to help farmers replace lost subsidies and manage financial risk.
He stated, “For all farm businesses, tenants, upland and others, to stay viable in an increasingly uncertain world and to make sure they can keep producing the food we all need, they must be able to profit from other activities.”
Yet, compulsory purchase orders (CPOs) announced in the planning bill contradict this vision—if landowners are at risk of losing their holdings, how can they confidently diversify? Without assurances, diversification will remain an aspiration rather than a viable economic strategy. The sector needs genuine stability not false promises and misdirection.
What now? Whilst we let the lobbying bodies (CLA, NFU etc.) attempt to reverse these harmful policy changes, DPA urges farmers to focus on building business resilience through other means. Contact us today for a no obligations discussion surrounding what the above means for your business, and actions that can be taken to help secure the future of your rural business.