25/06/2026
🚜 The Government’s new Farming Roadmap argues that farming is worth far more than the often-quoted 0.6% of GDP.
They’re right.
The 0.6% figure only measures what happens at the farm gate. Once you include the food processing, manufacturing, transport, retail and hospitality sectors that depend on British farming, the wider agri-food industry contributes around £153 billion to the UK economy - more than 6% of GDP.
Yet the annual farming budget is around £2.4 billion.
Think about that for a moment.
A sector underpinning £153 billion of economic activity receives support equivalent to around 1.5% of the value it helps generate.
And even that figure is misleading.
Much of this money is not direct support for food production. Farmers increasingly receive payments in return for delivering public goods and services such as habitat creation, carbon storage, water management, flood mitigation and environmental improvements.
That isn’t a handout.
It’s a contract.
The Government now wants farming to be recognised as critical national infrastructure and valued for its true economic contribution. Farmers would welcome that.
But there remains one glaring contradiction.
While ministers talk about long-term certainty, growth and investment, they continue to ignore the policy that is doing more than any other to undermine confidence in the sector: the changes to Inheritance Tax reliefs for family farms.
Farmers are being asked to invest, expand, innovate and plan for the future, while facing uncertainty over whether the next generation will be able to inherit the business intact.
That uncertainty is already influencing investment decisions, succession planning and long-term growth across the industry.
If the Government truly wants a thriving farming sector in 2050, it cannot ignore the issue that is discouraging investment today.
You cannot claim farming is worth £153 billion to the economy, describe it as critical national infrastructure, and then pursue policies that make it harder for family farms to survive from one generation to the next.
