In a time of change, Sky News spent a critical year on a farm | Money news

Many months before farmers were on the front pages of the papers, having protested in Whitehall against the new government’s inheritance tax rules, we at Sky News embarked on a project.

Most of our reports are relatively short affairs, recorded and edited for the evening news. We capture snapshots of life in households, businesses and communities around the country. But this year we set out to do something different: spend a year covering the story of a family farm.

We had no idea at the time that agriculture would become one cover story. But even back in January, 2024 was shaping up to be a critical year for the sector. After all, this was the year the new post-Brexit the scheme for agricultural payments enters into full force. After relying on subsidies each year to simply cultivate a given area, farmers were now being asked to commit to various schemes that focused less on food than on environmental goals.

This was also the first full year of the new trade agreements New Zealand and Australia. The result of these deals is that UK farmers are now competing with two of the world’s biggest food exporters, who can export more to the UK than they currently do.

Read more:
How climate change and red tape could jeopardize Britain’s access to affordable food
Rhetoric rises in farmers’ inheritance tax row – with neither side seemingly prepared to budge

On top of this, the winter that just passed was one particularly hard oneespecially for arable farmers. Cold, wet and unpredictable – even more so than the usual British weather. It promised to be a challenging year for growth.

With all this in mind, we set out to document what a year like this actually felt like for a farm – in this case Lower Drayton Farm in Staffordshire. In some respects this mixed farm is quite typical of parts of the UK – they raise livestock and grow wheat, as well as subcontracting some of their fields to potato and carrot growers.

A look at agriculture transformed

But in other respects, the two generations of the Bower family here, Ray and Richard, do something unusual. After seeing the sharp declines in income from growing food in recent years, they are trying to recreate what agriculture in the 21st century could look like. And in their case, that means building a children’s play center and what can be classified as “agritourism” activities next to them.

The result is that while much of their daily work is still traditional farming, an increasing proportion of their income comes from non-food activity. It underscores a broader point: Across the country, farmers are being asked to do unfamiliar things to make ends meet. Some, like Bowers, embrace this change; others struggle to adapt. But with more wet years ahead and more changes due to government support, the coming years could be a continued rollercoaster for UK farming.

With that in mind, I encourage you to watch our film of this year through the lens of this farm. It is, we hope, a fascinating, nuanced insight into life on earth.