Tenant farming future at risk amid policy shifts, warns TFA chair

Policy changes and shifting land use are putting the future of tenant farming in England and Wales at risk, the Tenant Farmers Association (TFA) has warned.

In his report to the organisation’s Annual General Meeting, TFA national chair Robert Martin urged government, landowners and the wider agricultural industry to recognise the urgency of protecting the tenanted sector as it faces a period of significant change.

Mr Martin said changes to inheritance tax policy and environmental funding are already influencing the behaviour of private estates, with some landlords reconsidering how their land is used.

“With estates preparing for potential Inheritance Tax liabilities, we are seeing landlords increasingly looking to end tenancies whilst seeking alternative land uses with potentially higher returns or reducing term lengths on new tenancies,” he said.

He warned that such shifts could undermine the long-term stability of tenant farming businesses.

Recent Defra figures highlight the scale of the issue. According to the data, there was a 6% drop in the number of Farm Business Tenancy (FBT) agreements between 2024 and 2025, with around 10,000 fewer agreements than in 2018.

“This cannot be good for the agricultural sector as a whole,” Mr Martin said.

The Tenant Farmers Association represents farmers who rent land rather than owning it, and campaigns on issues affecting the tenanted farming sector across England and Wales.

Despite the pressures facing the industry, Mr Martin highlighted several recent lobbying successes for the organisation.

He described the TFA as “the consistent, dedicated and reasoned voice of tenant farmers in national policy debates”, pointing to changes made to government inheritance tax proposals following industry engagement.

These included the introduction of higher thresholds and spousal transfers, reforms Mr Martin said the TFA had advocated for while others had remained silent.

However, he argued that further changes are needed to encourage longer-term farm tenancies and strengthen the resilience of the sector.

“We need to see the government move to incentivise longer term FBTs by allowing landlords letting land on agreements of 10 years or more the opportunity to claim the land value as part of their zero-rate threshold for Inheritance Tax,” he said.

“This has been a long-term policy goal of the TFA to bring a greater degree of resilience and sustainability to the let sector.”

Mr Martin also renewed calls to reform compensation rules for tenants who lose land to development. Current statutory caps, he said, often fail to reflect the true losses faced by farming businesses, an issue becoming increasingly relevant as solar and infrastructure projects expand across agricultural land.

Another development welcomed by the TFA is the appointment of Alan Laidlaw as England’s first Commissioner for the Tenant Farming Sector — a role created following sustained lobbying from the association.

While praising the commissioner’s early engagement with the industry, Mr Martin said the scale of the challenge should not be underestimated.

“The TFA’s own research suggests that around 30% of tenants feel bullied or intimidated by their landlords and 37% say the same of their landlords’ agents,” he said.

“There may be a lot of rot to deal with, and tenants need to be encouraged not to be fearful to raise issues with the Commissioner.”

He also urged landlords to embed the Agricultural Landlord and Tenant Code of Practice, published in 2024, within tenancy agreements and to commit to referring disputes about compliance with the code to the commissioner where appropriate.

Alongside tenancy concerns, Mr Martin also addressed uncertainty surrounding environmental policy.

He criticised Defra's decision to abruptly close the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) in 2025, saying the move had left many farmers feeling frustrated after years of encouragement to engage in environmental land management schemes.

“The closure of the SFI in 2025 left farmers feeling betrayed and frustrated after being encouraged for years to engage in environmental land management programmes,” he said.

However, Mr Martin said the planned reopening of the scheme later this year offers hope that the government will adopt a more stable and transparent approach.

He welcomed safeguards such as the £100,000 payment cap, which he said would help prevent large landowners from “gaming the system at the expense of working farmers”.

In Wales, Mr Martin praised the work of TFA Cymru in helping ensure tenant farmers can access the Welsh government’s new Sustainable Farming Scheme, even where tenancy agreements place restrictions on participation.

“We are grateful to the Welsh government for taking a very pragmatic approach to its new scheme by giving tenant farmers the confidence to join,” he said.

He added that Rural Payments Wales would need to take a “proportionate and flexible approach” as farmers adapt to the major shift in agricultural policy.

Concluding his report, Mr Martin highlighted the TFA’s continued support for members. In the year to October 2025, the organisation delivered around 8,000 advisory consultations, totalling approximately 1,700 hours of guidance for tenant farmers.

“I would urge all tenant farmers to take up membership of the TFA,” he said. “Whilst we have achieved much, imagine how much more could be achieved if we had double the number of members.”

Mr Martin said strengthening the resilience and sustainability of the tenanted farming sector would remain a key priority as the industry navigates ongoing policy changes and land use pressures.