During the TFA’s Annual General Meeting, held today (Wednesday 11 March), our National Chair, Robert Martin, used his report to stress the importance of the TFA’s lobbying for the tenanted sector of agriculture and all those who use land that they do not own within their farming businesses.

Robert said that the TFA continues to have important and meaningful impact in a broad range of areas and remains the consistent, dedicated and reasoned voice of tenant farmers in national policy debates.  However, he called for the Government, landlords and the wider agricultural industry to recognise the urgency of safeguarding the future of the tenanted sector of agriculture, across England and Wales, as it faces a period of significant challenge.

He referenced the changes to Inheritance Tax, which could be a major disincentive for private estates to continue letting land on long-term agreements, and the framework for public and private environmental funding, which is also encouraging landlords to remove land from the let sector of agriculture.  Robert said he was proud of the way in which the TFA had addressed the Inheritance Tax changes, announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in October 2024. He said from the very outset that the TFA had offered the Government a list of refinements of that policy, including the increase to the zero-rate threshold and the introduction of spousal transfers both of which the Government had eventually taken up. However, he stressed the need for the Government to go further by incentivising landlords to let longer term Farm Business Tenancies by allowing landlords letting land on agreements of 10 years or more the opportunity to claim the land value as part of their zero-rate threshold. Robert also pointed to the appointment of Alan Laidlaw, England’s first Commissioner for the Tenant Farming Sector, as another key achievement of TFA lobbying. He praised the early engagement being reported by the Commissioner. However, he warned about the scale of the challenge with the TFA’s own research, which suggested that around 30% of tenants feel bullied or intimidated by their landlords and 37% say the same of their landlords’ agents.  He said that we must see a shift away from this narrative and encouraged all landlords to embed the Agricultural Landlord and Tenant Code of Practice, published in 2024, within their tenancy agreements.  To read the National Chair’s report in full, click here.