Rebecca Smith MP met and supported local farmers at the National Farmers’ Union’s (NFU) mass lobby last week.

The South West Devon MP, whose constituency includes the Yelverton area, has been listening to farmers’ concerns that the Government's ‘family farm tax’ would force them to sell up and prevent them from passing on their life's work to their children.

The event reached full capacity of 1,800, ‘demonstrating farmers’ strength of feeling’ and described as ‘just the start of the fight’. NFU president Tom Bradshaw described the Budget as a blow for British farmers who are already ‘down to the bone and gristle’.

Those who oppose the policy argue that hardworking farmers deserve better from a government which is already asking them to dish out more for employers’ national insurance contributions and the national living wage, said the MP.

Rebecca stated: “My farmers have my full support, and I will continue to support them in their fight. The Government must understand food doesn't grow on shelves. If it doesn't care about Britain's 70,000 farms, it should consider the impact that its cruel policy will have on the food bills of families across the nation.

“There's no way of spinning it; this policy simply has to change. The Chancellor must sit down with farmers, as she was quick to do with public sector trade unions, and find a solution that gives family farms a future.”

Left unchecked, Rebecca warned the tax will “tear apart” rural communities like South West Devon. She said taxing farmers 20 per cent on assets with over £1m (a threshold which any viable farm meets) “sounds a death knell for the family farm”.

She said many farmers told her they were deeply worried they would not be able to pass on their farms to their children because of the tax.

She said: “Farmers run on extremely thin margins, often left with less than one per cent profit on food they produce. When the Country and Land Business Association crunched the numbers, it found that the typical family farm would be required to spend 159 per cent of its profits for a decade to pay inheritance tax, risking 70,000 family farms across the UK.

“This policy also threatens to damage the UK's food security. At a time of global insecurity, we will become fully dependent on foreign imports to feed the nation. This will leave the UK vulnerable and hit the pockets of every British citizen, whether you live in the town or country.”

She added that the Food Standards Agency reports that lower-income households now spent more than 16 per cent of their weekly budget on feeding their families, compared with just five per cent for the highest-income households. These rising food prices will hit the poorest hardest and widen inequalities in our communities.