Many months earlier than farmers discovered themselves on the entrance pages of newspapers, after protesting in Whitehall in opposition to the brand new authorities’s inheritance tax guidelines, we at Sky Information embarked upon a mission.

Most of our stories are comparatively brief affairs, recorded and edited for the night information. We seize snapshots of life in households, companies and communities across the nation. However this yr we undertook to do one thing completely different: to spend a yr overlaying the story of a household farm.

We had no inkling, on the time, that farming would grow to be a front-page story. However even again in January, 2024 was shaping as much as be a essential yr for the sector. This, in spite of everything, was the yr the brand new post-Brexit regime for farm funds would come into full drive. Having trusted subsidies every year for merely farming a given acreage of land, farmers had been now being requested to decide to completely different schemes centered much less on meals than on environmental targets.

This was additionally the primary full yr of the brand new commerce offers with New Zealand and Australia. The upshot of those offers is that UK farmers at the moment are competing with two of the world’s main meals exporters, who can export extra into Britain than they do at present.

You may watch the Sky Information particular report, The Final Straw, on Sky Information at 9pm on Friday

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On prime of this, the winter that simply handed was a significantly powerful one, particularly for arable farmers. Chilly, moist and unpredictable – much more so than the same old British climate. It promised to be a difficult yr for rising.

With all of this in thoughts, we got down to doc what a yr like this truly felt like for a farm – on this case Decrease Drayton Farm in Staffordshire. In some respects, this blended farm is sort of typical for components of the UK – they rear livestock and develop wheat, in addition to subcontracting a few of their fields to potato and carrot growers.

A take a look at farming reimagined

However in different respects, the 2 generations of the Bower household right here, Ray and Richard, are doing one thing uncommon. Seeing the precipitous falls in revenue from rising meals in recent times, they’re attempting to reimagine what farming within the twenty first century would possibly appear like. And of their case, meaning constructing a play centre for kids and what may be categorised as “agritourism” actions alongside them.

The upshot is that whereas a lot of their day-to-day work continues to be conventional farming, an rising share of their revenue comes from non-food exercise. It underlines a broader level: throughout the nation, farmers are being requested to do unfamiliar issues to make ends meet. Some, just like the Bowers, are embracing that change; others are struggling to adapt. However with extra moist years anticipated forward and extra modifications due in authorities assist, the approaching years may very well be a seamless curler coaster for British farming.

With that in thoughts, I might encourage you to look at our movie of this yr by way of the lens of this farm. It’s, we hope, a captivating, nuanced perception of life on the land.

You may watch the Sky Information particular report, The Final Straw, on Sky Information at 9pm on Friday