Tenant or landowner ?

digger64

Member
Quite right. FBT's can be any length. It's generally the Land Agents who push for short ones (nothing to do with then needing a land agent to negotiate one much more often of course..).
[/QUOTE]
stamp duty can affect this also
 
you've all heard if the word boycott, but do you know where it originatd from,boycott was an English absentee landlords agent in Ireland who wouldnt reduce the rent after a bad year that his tenants stop paying and working for him,even in his house,this then spread thought out Ireland giving the tenants the right to buy,most farms are owned here,very little tenancy but con acre,rental from April to November is very common,a rocky foundation thet the dairy industry is built on
 

2wheels

Member
Location
aberdeenshire
I've been pushing for the ground we rent to be put on to a 5 or 10 year FBT which would then justify us investing in it which it desperately needs. The landlord (retired farmer, not a member of the mustard corduroy gang) is very reluctant and frankly I don't blame him. Even though we get on well and have similar objectives, the political climate in Scotland is so anti land owner that they will avoid anything which could be perceived as weakening their hold on their land, even a relatively "safe" medium term FBT.
Wasn't this how the Nazis in Germany started by turfing the large landowners off their estates? I stand to be corrected.
 

toquark

Member
Wasn't this how the Nazis in Germany started by turfing the large landowners off their estates? I stand to be corrected.
No idea to be honest. Interestingly, I believe that large numbers of the European and indeed British aristocracy sympathised with the Nazi cause, but whether that was down to their policy on land ownership or their darker eugenics ambitions, I couldn't say.
 

7610 super q

Never Forgotten
Honorary Member
Back before AHA tenancies, nasty landlords took the pish. Then came along AHA, tenants took the pish, and the pendulum swung the other way. Now we have gone in the other direction with short term FBT's, which I suppose benefit the LL more. Go back 100 years and most farmland was tenanted, then owner occupiers were the majority, now it seems to be heading back to renting again....
As said above, I wouldn't rent land out on a either a AHA nor a short term FBT. I don't like the way various governments quietly change them ( usually in favour of the tenant ) over the years.
If you sign an agreement, the gentlemanly thing to do is to stick to what is written in that agreement ( Looking at my AHA agreement, there's no mention of compo to quit, nor handing the tenancy over to a complete stranger for another 25 years ).
As for " Proper farmer " it's a running joke after Clive's dad proclaimed those that post on other farming forums weren't proper farmers anyway. Thankfully only a handful on here think they're a cut above the rest. Usually no - tillers.....:whistle:
 

Bob the beef

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Scot Borders
Having farmed on both sides of the fence so to speak, I have seen a lot of the problems first hand. As always, the truth resides somewhere in the middle. There are some very good landlords in Scotland that look after their tenants, and appreciate the good they do for the asset, and there are some rotten landlords , that hide behind a W...r of an agent doing their utmost to make the tenants life a misery. But by the same token there are some absolute Bolshevik tenants out there that think they are owed a living by the landlord, an d don’t need to pay much for the right to use his asset to make money.
We were served notice to quit by our landlord due to the right to buy legislation, and the fact that we had, quite rightly registered our interest to purchase. We were paying a very fair rent and looked after the assets as if it were our own. Other tenants on the estate, didn’t register their right to buy and are still farming away with secure tenancies paying a pittance of a rent (c£30 acre) for good general cropping land.
 
Having farmed on both sides of the fence so to speak, I have seen a lot of the problems first hand. As always, the truth resides somewhere in the middle. There are some very good landlords in Scotland that look after their tenants, and appreciate the good they do for the asset, and there are some rotten landlords , that hide behind a W...r of an agent doing their utmost to make the tenants life a misery. But by the same token there are some absolute Bolshevik tenants out there that think they are owed a living by the landlord, an d don’t need to pay much for the right to use his asset to make money.
We were served notice to quit by our landlord due to the right to buy legislation, and the fact that we had, quite rightly registered our interest to purchase. We were paying a very fair rent and looked after the assets as if it were our own. Other tenants on the estate, didn’t register their right to buy and are still farming away with secure tenancies paying a pittance of a rent (c£30 acre) for good general cropping land.
If you had a secure tenancy for £30/ acre, why on earth rock the boat? Would it not have paid better to stay on board until such times as circumstances were changing for the worse ? Very interesting thread this as each area seems to operate on different systems. Here in NI. most farmers own land and take more in annual conacre. Where people know and get on well this arrangement can run for years. The NT. own Estates near us and of course the dreaded Land Agents complicate things, but large Dairy farms are pushing the price of rent almost beyond the reach of others. £160-180/year.
 

glasshouse

Member
Location
lothians
We are tenant 's and owners so can see both sides of the coin.

The "tension" that you speak of is brought about when you have idiots like Glasshouse who seems to think that "what's his is his and what's mine should also be his".

My family have farmed the block of land that we tenant since 1938, we have a very good relationship with the landlords but they are absolutely terrified of the 'right to buy' legislation which folks like Glasshouse are desperate to have brought into force. When this was first talked about landlords like ours employed land agents to help them safeguard their land.

This has totally backfired on everyone as the land agent's are complete parasites who are lining their pockets and destroying relationships which have been built up over many generations. So landlords are now taking land back in hand and farming it themselves which is denying young people the chance of a tenancy.

I think that @holwellcourtfarm is right with his figure of 40%.

I wouldn't rent land to anyone at the minute because of people like Glasshouse!
Yawn
 

glasshouse

Member
Location
lothians
Having farmed on both sides of the fence so to speak, I have seen a lot of the problems first hand. As always, the truth resides somewhere in the middle. There are some very good landlords in Scotland that look after their tenants, and appreciate the good they do for the asset, and there are some rotten landlords , that hide behind a W...r of an agent doing their utmost to make the tenants life a misery. But by the same token there are some absolute Bolshevik tenants out there that think they are owed a living by the landlord, an d don’t need to pay much for the right to use his asset to make money.
We were served notice to quit by our landlord due to the right to buy legislation, and the fact that we had, quite rightly registered our interest to purchase. We were paying a very fair rent and looked after the assets as if it were our own. Other tenants on the estate, didn’t register their right to buy and are still farming away with secure tenancies paying a pittance of a rent (c£30 acre) for good general cropping land.
You shouldnt have registered your right to buy if you didnt have a secure tenancy.
 

glasshouse

Member
Location
lothians
Hey
As an Australian, it’s something that I’m not that familiar with & probably don’t have a good grasp on, but reading TFF it seems that a lot of farm businesses operate on leased / rented land ( owned by the Duke of Westminster, or the C of E or some other massive aristocratic landowner ), rather than having freehold title on your land. There also seems to be a bit of “tension” between tenant farmers & landowners ? Which then raises questions over what a “real” farmer is ?

just curious, does anyone have a rough idea of what % of farm businesses in the UK are tenants & how many actually own the land they farm ?. Which is “normal” or the most common ?

Most here own the land they farm

cheers 👍
Whats the price of land in your area?
 

Swarfmonkey

Member
Location
Hampshire
Wasn't this how the Nazis in Germany started by turfing the large landowners off their estates? I stand to be corrected.

If the Nazis wanted something - land, businesses, houses - it would force the owner to sell it for a pittance.

Many lost their property this way if they weren’t seen to actively support the Nazis.
 
Last edited:

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
NO idea what a “real” farmer is meant to mean, but it does seem to take up a lot of TFF space . . .

I also don’t really understand how subs etc work & who is or isn’t eligible. . .
The whole concept is foreign to me
The short answer is: They don't!

There have been so many changes that I get confused myself now. :scratchhead:

In simple terms subsidy was paid as "deficiency payments" until EU entry in the early 1970's. When the market price fell below a notional lower threshold the government paid out a support payment to the trade (who were then hoped to pay more for the product in return, so called "trickle down economics" :ROFLMAO:).

Under the EU the subsidies were run as "intervention buying" whereby if the market fell too low they stepped in and physically bought products at a higher baseline price to support the market and stored them for sale when (if) the price rose. This just resulted in huge stores of goods rotting in sheds, the fabled "agricultural surpluses".

When this got so bad in milk in 1984 they introduced milk quotas to ̶control production. :banghead:

Around the same time (iirc) they swapped to direct support of key commodities. We thus had "Suckler cow premium" (EU money paid annually for each breeding beef cow you owned (or pretended to own in some less honest places)), protein crops premium and beef special premium.

This clearly was a mess and cost too much so in came IACS, the Integrated Agricutural Control System. Membership of the scheme was individual and optional but paid so much that virtually everyone joined. We all had to submit records annually of what we produced and where with supporting maps and were paid by each commodity according to rates offered that year. To cut the surpluses they introduced "set aside" where we had to leave a %age of our land idle each year to get the rest of the money. The %age changed each year. This led to farms deciding their cropping based on what paid the most subsidy each year, a crazy system.

Next the system was "reformed" to "de-link" subsidy from production with the "Single Payment system" where you still had to send in data annually on what you produced in each field but the payment made was based on the average of what you had received in the 5 years before the change over and was paid irrespective of what you produced so long as you kept the land in GAEC: "Good Agricultural and Ecological Condition" :censored::rolleyes: as defined in the scheme bible. This is where the payments started to be split from production and, in some cases, were kept by the landlord rather than the tenant. Oh, and the beloved "Rural Payments Agency" was created to manage the idea's implementation.

This led to the "working farmer test" which, in reality, was fudged by most competent land agents on the Landlord's behalf by dreaming up compliance schemes. Are you keeping up? Good.

As an aside, these schemes after the deficiency payment system did not include some sectors notably veg growers, pigs, poultry and milk who just produced without subsidy.

To "simplify" all this complexity the "Basic Payment System" was introduced to make the system easier to manage.

At this point we had all become expert paperwork shufflers with the week before May 15th each year (the application deadline) being our best paid hours of the year but we all became so confused with the annual changes to the rules that we ceased noticing how unprofitable we had all become with all this "public support".

I'm sure I have missed out some key info and got a few bits confused but then I have lived through it all and so claim dimished responsibility as a result...



As Guy Martin says: What could possibly go wrong? ;)
 
Last edited:

Bob the beef

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Scot Borders
The short answer is: They don't!

There have been so many changes that I get confused myself now. :scratchhead:

In simple terms subsidy was paid as "deficiency payments" until EU entry in the early 1970's. When the market price fell below a notional lower threshold the government paid out a support payment to the trade (who were then hoped to pay more for the product in return, so called "trickle down economics" :ROFLMAO:).

Under the EU the subsidies were run as "intervention buying" whereby if the market fell too low they stepped in and physically bought products at a higher baseline price to support the market and stored them for sale when (if) the price rose. This just resulted in huge stores of goods rotting in sheds, the fabled "agricultural surpluses".

When this got so bad in milk in 1984 they introduced milk quotas to 𝚍̶𝚎̶𝚙̶𝚛̶𝚎̶𝚜̶𝚜̶ ̶control production. :banghead:

Around the same time (iirc) they swapped to direct support of key commodities. We thus had "Suckler cow premium" (EU money paid annually for each breeding beef cow you owned (or pretended to own in some less honest places)), protein crops premium and beef special premium.

This clearly was a mess and cost too much so in came IACS, the Integrated Agricutural Control System. Membership of the scheme was individual and optional but paid so much that virtually everyone joined. We all had to submit records annually of what we produced and where with supporting maps and were paid by each commodity according to rates offered that year. To cut the surpluses they introduced "set aside" where we had to leave a %age of our land idle each year to get the rest of the money. The %age changed each year. This led to farms deciding their cropping based on what paid the most subsidy each year, a crazy system.

Next the system was "reformed" to "de-link" subsidy from production with the "Single Payment system" where you still had to send in data annually on what you produced in each field but the payment made was based on the average of what you had received in the 5 years before the change over and was paid irrespective of what you produced so long as you kept the land in GAEC: "Good Agricultural and Ecological Condition" :censored::rolleyes: as defined in the scheme bible. This is where the payments started to be split from production and, in some cases, were kept by the landlord rather than the tenant. Oh, and the beloved "Rural Payments Agency" was created to manage the 𝚏̶𝚒̶𝚊̶𝚜̶𝚌̶𝚘̶ excellent idea's implementation.

This led to the "working farmer test" which, in reality, was fudged by most competent land agents on the Landlord's behalf by dreaming up compliance schemes. Are you keeping up? Good.

As an aside, these schemes after the deficiency payment system did not include some sectors notably veg growers, pigs, poultry and milk who just produced without subsidy.

To "simplify" all this complexity the "Basic Payment System" was 𝚏̶𝚘̶𝚒̶𝚜̶𝚝̶𝚎̶𝚍̶ ̶𝚘̶𝚗̶ introduced to us to make the system 𝚖̶𝚘̶𝚛̶𝚎̶ ̶𝚋̶𝚞̶𝚛̶𝚎̶𝚌̶𝚛̶𝚊̶𝚝̶𝚒̶𝚌̶ easier to manage.

At this point we had all become expert paperwork shufflers with the week before May 15th each year (the application deadline) being our best paid hours of the year but we all became so confused with the annual changes to the rules that we ceased noticing how unprofitable we had all become with all this "public support".

I'm sure I have missed out some key info and got a few bits confused but then I have lived through it all and so claim dimished responsibility as a result...



As Guy Martin says: What could possibly go wrong? ;)
Good effort @holwellcourtfarm.
my memory a bit vague pre 1980, but when you read what we have been through in the last 40 years, the EU didn’t do us many favours. And I was a remainer 😳😳
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 80 42.3%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 66 34.9%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 15.9%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

  • 1,293
  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
Top