Tom Halliday

Farming & Family

[ClarksonsFarm @ClarksonsFarm1]

I won’t. Repost if you agree.

[James Melville 🚜 @JamesMelville]

Even the sheep are joining in.
🐑 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

[TheFarmingForum @TheFarmingForum]

The November futures price for wheat has just slumped to £167 a tonne, and Everyone is about ready to chuck their combine in a ditch and open a bloody vape shop. Twenty years ago, wheat was fetching £120–£140 a tonne, and here we are in 2025, with prices barely budging while the cost of everything—fuel, fertiliser, a pint at the pub—has shot through the roof like a rocket. It’s a disgrace, and I’m not mincing words here: the government’s handling of farmers is an absolute, steaming pile of incompetence.

Two years ago, some suited pillock in a think tank told us £200 a tonne was the “new normal” for wheat because of inflation. Inflation! That magical word that’s supposed to explain why your diesel costs more than a Mayfair flat but your crops are worth less than a used caravan ! Now we’re back in the £160s, and farmers are expected to pull off yields of 9 or 10 tonnes a hectare just to break even. Good luck with that when we’ve had a spring so dry it made the Sahara look like a sodding swamp. The average yield’s more like 7 or 8 tonnes, and that’s if your field hasn’t been flattened by a biblical storm or nibbled to death by rabbits.
And don’t get me started on the government. Oh, they love banging on about “food security” while sipping overpriced lattes in Westminster, but what have they actually done for farmers? Bugger all, that’s what. The post-Brexit dream of a golden age for British agriculture? Utter tosh. The shift to that Environmental Land Management malarkey has been a bureaucratic cock-up of epic proportions—payments late, slashed, or lost in some civil servant’s inbox. Then there’s the genius move of signing a trade deal letting 1.4 billion litres of cheap American ethanol flood our shores, which could shut down our bioethanol plants like Vivergo and Ensus. That’s less demand for our wheat and a CO2 shortage that’ll bugger up everything from fizzy drinks to frozen chips. Well done, lads. Top marks.
Farmers are at breaking point, and who can blame them? You try waking up at 4 a.m. to wrestle a broken baler, only to find out your crop’s worth less than the diesel you burned to harvest it. The National Farmers’ Union says mental health helplines are ringing off the hook.
This is the perfect storm, isn’t it? Low prices, sky-high costs, and a government that couldn’t organise a pee-up in a brewery. The 2025 harvest might hit 12.8 million tonnes—up 17% because we planted more—but yields are patchy thanks to that godawful dry spring, the worst in 150 years in some parts.

Where does it stop? Nobody knows. The futures market’s a casino run by idiots, and the government’s too busy faffing about with net-zero targets to notice the countryside’s on its knees. If they don’t pull their fingers out and start protecting farmers—proper subsidies, fair trade deals, less red tape—then British agriculture’s going to end up like my old Land Rover: knackered, abandoned, and good for nothing but scrap. Mrs C out ! https://t.co/24ClUwovXJ

[James 'Jimmy' Evans @jamesjimmyevans]

We’re looking for a ‘Lead Calf Manager’ If anybody on here is looking for/ knows someone who’s looking for a new challenge then please share/ get in touch. Thanks. #TeamDairy #Calves

[Rupert Lowe MP @RupertLowe10]

Walk down almost any high street in England. There’s a vape shop, run by a foreign man who can barely speak English. There’s a Turkish barber, run by a foreign man who can barely speak English. There’s an ‘asian’ grocery store, run by a foreign man who can barely speak English.

Character, gone. Community, gone. Independent British shops, mostly wiped away.

It just doesn’t feel like England anymore.

Does all of this make our country richer? It certainly doesn’t feel like it, walking through the decaying heart of almost every town in the country.

The quiet, relentless erosion of community by the sheer scale and pace of change imposed from above - the sense that we were one nation, one people. It all just feels gone.

When gangs of foreign men loiter on street corners, shouting in their own language, drinking and spitting. Are we supposed to just accept that as normal? Is that now what our country is? Women feeling intimidated in their own towns?

Because I don’t like it. It did not used to be like this. It’s not England. And it doesn’t have to be like this.

The change that has been imposed on us? It is not permanent. It is not irreversible. It is not inevitable.

Before any of that can happen, we need to get our politicians to even begin to discuss these issues - honestly, openly and without fear. Labour, Reform, Conservative. All scared of their own shadows, terrified of being called racist by an establishment media based in leafy Surrey towns that are yet to be enriched by all of this wonderful immigration.

I am so past caring about what these people think. We deserve to feel at home in the towns that our ancestors built. Not unsafe, not intimidated, not unwelcome.

I’ve had enough of it. The British people have had enough of it.

It’s time the rest of Westminster caught up.

[Alan Thomas @alanthomas64]

@benonwine Common sense
Decency
Good manners
Trustworthy politicians
The traditional British way of life
Looking out for your elders, be it family or neighbours
A good work ethic
Control of our borders
Our Military
Free speech
Christian free speech without fear of arrest

[The Jackal… @ToonDazza]

How come all of the fish in the English Channel belong to Europe but the humans on dinghies belong to England?

[Tom Halliday @tomhalliday_tom]

@HefinR @Countryfile Suggesting calibration issues? 😂

[Rhiannon @cowgirl_rhi]

The 2 most important things when the world is in chaos:

- Defence
- Food security

@Keir_Starmer is ramping up one and @RachelReevesMP is actively destroying the other.

It’s time to think again about what you’re doing to farmers @UKLabour

[Tom Halliday @tomhalliday_tom]

@benonwine 9/10 needs black pudding

[Stuart @StuartMaggs]

Good analogy from a farmer on the BBC this morning.

The impact of the #FamilyFarmTax is akin to forcing a fisherman to sell his boat to pay a tax bill. How do you expect farmers to continue their business if they've had to sell a large slice of land to fund inheritance tax?

[MaggieMou 🧡🦖 @jomesachorio]

@AngelaRayner

[Tom Halliday @tomhalliday_tom]

@christopherhope Any old Salopians?

[Hefin Richards @HefinR]

Why can’t train drivers be told to diversify? A few shifts at McDonalds, a bit of relief milking? 🤷‍♂️

[Tom Halliday @tomhalliday_tom]

@Minette_Batters @NFUtweets His grace, The Duke of Wellington, was sat behind you and clearly approved of your speech, as we all did 👌👏👏

[Tom Halliday @tomhalliday_tom]

@iandicko73 Just a couple of vaci-tankers there Ian

[Liz Webster @LizWebsterSBF]

Children delivered letters to @Keir_Starmer to ask him to change his mind about the pernicious #FamilyFarmTax which threatens their future.

[Tom Halliday @tomhalliday_tom]

@MajorDMalpas My friend, I have (had) gout in my ankle. Anyone that has gout knows your pain and it’s not for the faint hearted! If I’ve been drinking heavily/repeatedly, I start to get the feeling of a sprained ankle and I know immediately to stop the booze & drink water & rehydrate 👍👍