A South Yorkshire dairy farmer has joined the Stop the Family Farm Tax campaign by stickering 10,000 milk cartons that will go to shops and supermarkets across the region.
Our Cow Molly is Sheffield’s last dairy farm to bottle and distribute milk and they supply direct to locals and across supermarkets, shops, universities and cafes in the area.
Now, the family farm are bringing the National Farmer's Union campaign to kitchen tables across the region.
It comes as changes announced in the Autumn Budget to Agriculture Property Relief and Business Property Relief could see farms forced to sell some or all of their land to pay increased inheritance tax bills, resulting in threats to food production, the future of rural businesses and the wider economy.
Our Cow Molly is Sheffield’s last dairy farm to bottle and distribute milk and they supply direct to locals and across supermarkets, shops, universities and cafes in the area
GB News
Eddie Andrew is a third-generation farmer who runs Our Cow Molly and the farm with his brother Dan and parents who are both now pensioners.
He told GB News: "We thought that food packaging was a really good way of communicating the message. So there's a QR code [on the milk] that you can scan while you're sitting eating your breakfast, and then you can read through the information on the NFU website.
"It tells you APB, BPR, it explains all the jargon. The consumers are the most important people in this.
"They're the ones that are buying the products, and they're the ones that will be most upset if they're not there to buy."
The proposed inheritance tax changes now mean Eddie's family farm is under threat. They decided before the Autumn Budget to modernise the farm and build a new barn to accommodate robots and an anaerobic digester to capture methane and install a solar roof, as part of their work to contribute to climate change mitigation.
The Government slurry support grant, to improve slurry storage to aid environmental protection, is also now on hold, creating more stress and uncertainty for the family.
Eddie Andrew told GB News: "We're going to put up a new modern building. We're going to go into having robots in there, you know, more modern technology and we got a loan to do that.
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"We're building the building, everything's going grand, and then there's this new tax.
"So now we're kind of faced with that we know we've got to pay a loan back for the for the building, and we possibly might have a tax to pay as well.
"It's stalled an entire industry - we just want to carry on producing food for people, and this situation being in limbo is really, really unhelpful."
Environment Secretary Steve Reed Environment Secretary Reed apologised earlier this month for the "shock" suffered by farmers after the government upped taxes on farms.
He said: "We were shocked by the size of the financial black hole we were left to fill, and I'm sorry that some of the action we had to take, shocked you, in turn."
The family farm are bringing the National Farmer's Union campaign to kitchen tables across the region
GB News
The Stop the Family Farm Tax campaign is certainly growing in momentum at this farm and across Britain.
All of the UK’s major supermarkets have shared concerns over the government’s proposed changes to inheritance tax and 270,000 people have signed the stop the family farm tax petition.
Today's National Day of Unity will see more farmers gathering across the UK to thank the public for their support.
NFU President Tom Bradshaw said:“The Stop the Family Farm Tax campaign is a powerful visual reminder to the government that our fight to protect family farms is far from over.
“These tax changes are unjust, based on flawed data and risk destroying the very backbone of British agriculture.
“Family farms have been at the heart of our rural communities for generations, producing high-quality food, supporting local communities and maintaining the beautiful landscapes we all value. The proposed changes threaten not just individual farming families, but the future of the heritage and traditions of an entire way of life."
To find out more about the campaign, click here.
