‘The tractor tax means we’re sleepwalking into food shortages’
The IndependentWhen I was growing up in rural Lincolnshire, I remember my best friend’s dad would always use a certain saying. “I think what a lot of people are missing is that, if we have this tax – on the cuts that we have with the subsidies, on top of the existing legislation that we have to abide by – there’s only one way for the cost of food to go, and that’s to skyrocket,” says Gareth Wyn Jones, whose family have farmed Tyn Llwyfan Farm, situated at the foothills of the Carneddau Range, for 370 years. Though this rewilding is a worthy sentiment, for many struggling farmers it’s simply a “greenwashed land grab” – and one more barrier to affordable food production. “We’ve already had two up here do that.” Farmers have three times the national rate of male suicide in the UK – Wyn Jones confirms that they’re already seeing increased rates over in Wales, too. Wyn Jones reiterates Dymoke’s point that while “big landowners with a lot of money will find loopholes, this is going to be impacting poorer farmers within society,” he says, quite exasperated.