Can the bullshit come to an end please. The inheritance tax adjustment to what the rest of us have (but not as bad) is being used to vent frustrations that the likes of Clarkson and Farage (looking like a ferret!) are quick to inflame. In France farm owners have to prove their capability to farm, not sure how? In this country the vast amount of our land is owned by a tiny number of people, like the Duke of Westminster (who I bet does not pay much as he has an army of lawyers working on tax avoidance). Land equal to the size of Greater London is set aside for shooting Red Grouse! How many people can afford to go shooting?
The small scale farmers (most) should be quite rightly complaint about the prices paid by supermarkets, about chlorinated chicken from the USA (hang on though – the intensive chicken farms in the Wye Valley have numbers counted in 100000’s and pollute the river), So not them then! The consumer must be prepared to pay for environmentally produced meat – and then eat less of it!
So keep the inheritance tax, but also close loop holes that make buying agricultural land that makes it attract pension funds and investors.