Your Letters: November 26

Plus

Published 2 hours ago

Farmers protest outside the Northern Farming Conference in Hexham — Farmers have staged a protest outside the Northern Farming Conference in Hexham in Northumberland (Owen Humphreys/PA)

LABOUR NEEDS TO GET FARMING

I am very much afraid that Labour’s lack of understanding about agriculture, and succession to family farms will, if they don’t do a u-turn, lead to fragmentation of holdings that are at the moment only just viable, and food shortages, as happened in Zimbabwe, once the bread basket of Africa under white farmers, but reliant on food aid when Mugabe took over. Unless things change we will see the sale of farmhouses, and farmers living in caravans to avoid the £1 million value. £10 million might be better however.

Doesn’t Rachel Reeves realise that unless farms are big enough, they cannot produce food to feed the nation?

And who is going to work 80 or 90 hours a week for less than the minimum wage, as some young farmers do. If they see no future in farming, and no prospect of inheriting holdings from parents, unless land is sold off to pay inheritance tax?

W F Kerswell, Picklescott

MY VIEWS ON GLOBAL CHANGE