Assuming you aren’t living in the Cotswolds or other areas dominated by hobby farmers who over pay and under produce while have significant competition for the price of large houses that pushes up the cost per acre. £5m out side of these areas purchases a good few acres. At £10k an acre (roughly in the upper third for cost) that’s about 500 acres with farm buildings.

Even in a shit year with the wrong sort of production you should be clearing £250 per acre per year, or about £125k for 500 acres. Well run farms who pick the right crops for that year clear double that. £40k is significant but its not going to leave them in the poor house, particularly when you can stagger the payments to allow for inflation and also for poor yielding years.

That doesn’t include the various subsidies, which while even shitter than ever, they are hardly zero if you pick the right crop. Nor does it include any diversification, which any sensible farmer would already be doing. I don’t doubt this is going to result in a number of farms being forced to sell, but then were they ever actually viable in todays market?

The zero inheritance tax rule has to change because of people like Clarkson who have freely admitted to only buying their farm to avoid inheritance tax. Its pushed up the cost of farms as now you are competing against hobby farmers like Clarkson, or those who use a tenant farmer who is now priced out of the market to buy their own farm, or even worse, the farm just notionally farms with tiny herds.

I particularly dislike Clarkson and others pretending that its going to hit 96% of farmers, when the majority are well within the £3m, and with careful planning using the revised gifting rules you can extend it much higher than that. Most of those that are worried have their kids living and working on the farm, by carefully arranging how you hand over their property and some of the land, if done early enough, you can extend that.