This year’s Dairy Tech stood out as our biggest and best yet.
As I welcomed show delegates at our breakfast reception on the Barclay’s stand, I reflected on the positive strives in the industry over the last twelve months. We’ve seen hundreds of millions of pounds worth of investment pledged to UK dairy processing, along with multiple mergers and significant acquisitions.
This scale of investment displays confidence the like of which I don’t recall often seeing in my farming career and unlike many other farming sectors currently in decline, the prospects look positive for the future of dairy farming.
Yet, since the budget last October, farmers’ confidence and optimism for a promising year ahead has plummeted.
As a farmer, and as Chair of RABDF, I have signed the NFU’s letter urging Government to pause the implementation of IHT changes before consulting with the industry on how the objectives of all sides can be met.
Such a sudden and far-reaching policy change means that many farmers have paused to rethink investments indefinitely, not wanting to increase their inheritance tax liability, which in many cases they already cannot afford unless the business is sold.
The very reason for reliefs such as APR and BPR was to prevent the sale or break up of businesses such as mine to finance IHT payments following the death of the owner.
On my own farm, similar to many, we’ve been working to one set of rules for the past three decades, only to find the treasury is now changing these rules with little or no understanding of the potential consequences.
There is no doubt that damage to our own sector is one of those unintended consequences.
We also presented several awards today Dairy -Tech. The Royal Dairy Innovation Award, Dairy Student Award and Farm Health Management Award. Congratulations to all our finalists, and to our very worthy winners and highly commended entrants. Presenting these awards is the highlight of the day for everyone involved.
One of the main events of the day of course is the NMR/RABDF Gold Cup announcement and presentation. This year’s six finalists were all outstanding dairy businesses. All demonstrating excellence in dairy farming, placed the cow at the centre of their business and had a keen eye on the horizon, future proofing their operation. Yet there can only be one winner and it was Harper Adams University Farm that took home the award. The team are already organising the farm walk to celebrate and showcase their Gold Cup success, so look out for more details on the event soon.
It’s our mission with Dairy-Tech to help and enable dairy businesses to perform and prosper in challenging times, it’s also our ambition to continually improve the event. In that aim we’ve have amazing support from the wider industry, most especially our principal sponsor who has supported us from the start back in 2018, Barclays Bank. It’s worth remembering these events don’t just happen, as I said earlier, we have great support from across our industry and team, so thank you to RABDF colleagues, our generous and supportive sponsors and all the exhibitors. See you next year!