This week on The AG Show, we’re diving into what the Autumn Budget could mean for farmers. Hannah Clarke and Charlotte Forkes-Rees are joined by AHDB’s Lead Economist, Jess Corsair, to break it all down.

Charlotte’s also sharing her hot takes on what’s going to land on your Christmas dinner plate this year - spoiler: it’s not just turkey talk!

And if you’ve ever wondered what goes into organising an award-winning festive tractor run, we’ve got the inside scoop.

Plus, our F.I.E.L.D. agents are back decoding more of the weird and wonderful words from the farming world. You’ll never look at agri-lingo the same way again!

Some useful bits from the episode:

Autumn Budget 2025 and the impacts for agriculture | AHDB

Sheepy Ploughing Association

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Get up to much last night, Han?

I was actually down in London last night at a city meat lecture at our favourite place that isn't the HDB office butcher's hall for a fascinating debate on is there a future for livestock in modern society. But Andy also had quite an eventful day yesterday. I think it was his first time that the cattle got out and you weren't there to help.

I wasn't around so he was mucking out and lots of gates in the shed and they have slidy bolts. I think the cattle thought I'm quite bored of standing around waiting for you to muck me out.

So they licked open the slidey bolt and thankfully it was only like a small pen cause they're all split up so it's like 15, but still.

Andy was in the Manitou and he looked over and saw them heading towards the Foss Way, which for those that don't know is a really, really busy a road. Yeah, his heart was in his mouth. A Thankfully he managed to get them back in with the help of his friendly horsey neighbour Amy. So that was eventful.

Is that why you're recording in the office today? So that you're not getting the evils from Andy for leaving him to collect cattle on his own?

Yeah, I'm staying. Hello there, I'm Hannah Clarke.

I'm Charlotte Forkes-Rees and welcome to.

The AG Show where we cover more than just the A to G of food and farming.

We kick things off with a look at what's been in the news recently.

Paying particular attention to last week's autumn budget.

Our colleague and senior economist Jess Corsair will go through what impact it could have on farmers.

A small change to inheritance tax is the fact that the 1 million pound allowance so the agricultural property relief can now be transferred between spouses or civil partners.

We've got not one but two festive treats in store as I'll be making my Christmas dinner predictions.

And we find out what makes an award winning charity Christmas tractor run.

We've got quite a few on our run now that put their own snow machines on and one of them made a snow machine on the top of a sprayer so they had an unlimited amount of water. It was good. And you're just going past people, it's almost like they were going to a foam party.

And last but not least, we continue our quest to demystify farming jargon in field agents.

A reminder, new episodes of the Ag show drop every Wednesday at midday. Available wherever you get your podcasts with.

Audio and video versions for every show. Just subscribe to make sure you don't miss an episode.

And remember, guys, please do get in touch with us. We love to hear from you. Comment on any of our social posts or email us agshowdb.orguk.

It seems really strange Tom not being here for another week, but he's having some much needed holiday. And that then leaves me to introduce the news. Hannah, what have you been reading?

And these figures are a sense check of the sector, if you like.

They're used to check, firstly, whether basically government policy is actually working and farmers also use them to see how their business stacks up against others. So they're basically a pulse for what's going on in terms of farm business economics.

And the headline picture sounds positive from these figures, but I guess the devil's in the detail and there's more of a mixed picture going on with these figures. So, in simple terms, farm business income is the output generated by the farm business minus total farm costs.

While cereal farms rose, income rose about 20% to nearly 50,50,000. Lowland grazing farms also doubled to just over 41,000 and farms in hills and upland areas climbed to roughly 40,000.

But it wasn't quite so positive for everyone. So specialist pig farms saw incomes fall to around 127,000 pounds and horticulture slipped as well to around 53,000.

And those businesses particularly vulnerable to what we've seen in terms of high labour at energy costs as well as now. What's really important and interesting, I guess, about these figures is where the income is coming from in particular.

So across all farms, income from environmental schemes and diversification routes is now a major lifeline for businesses. And the figures show that these cost centres bring in roughly 21,000 pounds per farm on average. You know, this, this is a really crucial point.

I think that the total income from pure agricultural activity isn't enough in a lot of cases to prop up the income from these farms. And that kind of secondary stream of income is really, really important.

The other thing to mention about These figures is they kind of demonstrate the fact that the income swings quite a lot between enterprise and from year to year. It kind of demonstrates how fragile farm finances are. And importantly, these figures don't cover. They only run up to February 25th.

So they don't cover the tough harvest we've had and the really dry summer. So a bad harvest or rising costs or changes in government subsidy can really tip the dial for businesses from profit to loss very quickly.

So that was a fairly heavy going stat story. But Charlotte, you're going to give us a bit of light relief I think now.

Well, you both know we are now into December, so Hannah, producer Martin, how.

Much do I love a seasonal event?

Quite a lot, don't I?

So I'm very much going down that Christmas route today. So in the grocer I've seen that aldi's announced its Super 6 deal. So that's offering key Christmas vegetables for.

Just 8 pence each from 18th of December. So that's your carrots, your parsnips, your sprouts, all the essentials for your festive plate. Actually, that's really a price that's hard to ignore.

While Lidl has actually gone a step further. So they are offering a complete feast for eight for Christmas dinner at just £11 85.

So that includes a turkey with all the trimmings and works out as less than £1.50 per person. So these offers are really highlighting this trend that we've been talking about the last couple of weeks.

Retailers are really competing to deliver affordability during that time when budgets are tight for consumers, for shoppers, it does mean that they are going to be able to enjoy a Christmas dinner without feeling that financial, financial strain.

But these retailers are saying that while.

These low priced vegetables are not impacting its farmer suppliers, which they have long term agreements with, it does sort of open up this interesting question that actually what impact does this have on consumers perceptions about how much it actually costs to produce the food that we eat?

Well, something else quite large has been in the news over the last week and that is the autumn budget. And I thought it would be a really good idea to get our senior economist Jess in to talk about the budget and what it means for agriculture.

Jess, could you just take us through the key takeouts of what was announced last week?

Yep. So there's some key things within this budget that are relevant to farmers and the levy payers.

So we had the likes of the income tax thresholds being frozen, national minimum wage has been increased, there's Also the sugar tax, which has now been extended to kind of milk based products such as milkshakes and coffee based drinks. And there was also changes to kind of tax on savings and how cash isis work as well as sort of changes to energy bills.

And fuel tax duty has been frozen again as well.

So yeah, there's a few key things in the budget, aren't there, that farmers need to be aware of if we start maybe with income tax. And while I guess they haven't been directly targeted in this budget, there may be implications for people paying more.

Jess, could you just explain a bit more around that?

It might not impact us right now, but as our wages might increase with inflation as people get pay rises, it'll mean that more people end up in kind of a higher tax band than what they might have been if those bands had also increased with inflation. So that's sort of how kind of people might be affected. And disposable income is affected as well.

Just linked to that, we saw an increase in the minimum wage, didn't we? And that's obviously a big watch point for farmers. Could you just explain a bit more detail on what we saw with the wages?

And there is also we've got to consider the fact that in April this year we did see employers national insurance contributions increase as well. So we need to think about the effects of that added with the increase in wages next year as well.

So we're just going to see more costs associated with running businesses and people having to think about their costs.

There's and it didn't appear that farming was mentioned heavily at all really in the budget this time. I saw something on LinkedIn.

Someone had done some analysis of the red book and they'd basically control f to find the instances of the word farming in the writing in the document. And I think there was about four or five instances where the word farm appeared, but it was prefaced with the word solar or wind.

So not really talking about food Production. I guess importantly with this, obviously one of the major topics of conversation around the budget is inheritance tax.

And there wasn't a U turn on that, was there, Jess?

No, there wasn't. We kind of weren't expecting a U turn on it.

One change that we saw within the budget, a small change to inheritance tax, is the fact that the 1 million pound allowance, so the agricultural property relief can now be transferred between spouses or civil partners. So, so that's the one kind of small change that we saw to inheritance tax.

The one other thing that I thought was quite interesting to maybe ask you about was something to do with dairy and the sugar tax. What's kind of happened with that and what impact might that have on dairy?

Because it's come at quite an interesting time for the dairy sector, hasn't it?

The sugar tax was originally implemented and covered fizzy drinks. So any dairy based products were exempt from sugar tax.

But it was announced kind of the day before the budget that the sugar tax will now be extended to dairy based products. So this will tend to be milkshakes or the coffee drinks, the lattes you get in shops and things.

Once a drink has kind of a specific amount of sugar in it, then there'll be a tax added to that. And I think even though kind of the dairy farmers and producers won't be kind of directly impacted by that sugar tax processes will be.

So whether prices go up in chop or this impact down the supply chain, we will see. What the concern is at the moment is within dairy kind of the prices are down. So we are seeing prices down already and supply is up.

Anything that may dampen demand for kind of dairy based products is a little bit of a concern.

So Jess, there's a lot of detail in this budget announcement, isn't there? But I'm interested to know what do you think it all means in the grand scheme of things for farming, although.

The budget, there's not been any kind of hard hitting tax changes like we saw last year, there's a number of smaller measures that we've discussed that will have an impact across the sector.

And I think these kind of, these smaller changes alongside the changes to inheritance tax last year and those changes to national insurance contributions as well as changes in policy, so we're seeing direct payments go down. There's just, there's a lot of things there that could impact farmers.

It's a time just to start planning and understanding details of your business and finding opportunities to kind of build resilience and efficiency into businesses, to really kind of counteract those changes that we're seeing.

Yeah, some really good advice there at the end. Jess, thanks so much for your time. So that was Jess Corsair, our senior economist, talking about the budget.

And I know there's more analysis that Jess has done on the HDB website, so please do go and check that out for more information. But now I think it's time for a quick break. Welcome, guys, back to the Ag Show. Don't forget, if you want to get in touch with us, please do.

Agshowhcb.org UK is the email you need to reach us. Or please do comment on any of our social posts to get in touch.

Right, I think we need some music to get us in the mood for.

What I'm about to talk about.

Oh, what's going on? There's a lot of wrestling. For those that can't see, Charlotte's just taken her gillet off and underneath is a Christmas jumper.

Oh, and now there's a headband. Oh, I like it. It's Christmas time.

I was gonna say Hannah. Producer Martin, you know, we are now firmly at my favorite time of year.

Deck the halls, fire up the ovens. Christmas is coming and I've got some.

Festive food forecasts for you.

So I've run some bespoke research recently with two of our research agencies, so Spark Minds and YouGov into getting the lowdown on what consumers are planning on.

Doing for their Christmas Day, as well as the wider festive period.

So first things first, I think it's.

Really important to flag this that despite, you know, almost half of us are having a little bit of a tough time and perhaps thinking about cutting back on overall Christmas spending, food isn't really going to be impacted. It's still classed as something of protected spend.

So even if the budget's tight, the.

Meat, the turkey, the Christmas dinner, it's not going anywhere. And actually it would almost be classed as something similar to keeping your Christmas tree or even keeping your kids presents there.

So really important to consumers and.

And when we look at how people want to celebrate, actually most people are saying that their celebrations are going to be as big, if not bigger than last year and majority are going to be with six or more guests.

So plenty of plates, plenty of people to be feeding this Christmas, where I was anticipating then that, oh, if you've got, you know, budgets a bit tight or more people coming for meals with.

You on that special day, you'd be.

Thinking you might be looking to go for cheaper proteins. But no, actually, choices are looking Quite similar to last year. So turkey is very much going to be the star of the show.

So just over half of people are planning on having that on their Christmas Day.

But I'm sure if you've been keeping up to date with a number of our insights into beef and lamb over the last year, you do know they've had a little bit of a tricky year. So inflationary pressures really having a bit of a play on demand for them.

So I had been thinking that their demand was going to be looking to ease this Christmas, but actually they're holding ground. So shoppers are looking to be purchasing similar amounts of these proteins compared to last year. So why might that be?

It's actually because 68% of shoppers say.

That they're just going to do whatever.

It takes to make Christmas magical this year. So really prioritizing that taste and tradition over penny pinching, how does that compare.

To what you're thinking, Hannah, for your Christmas Day?

Oh, you know, I love a gammon. I will be gratefully receiving whatever mother in law decides to cook for us. It's normally a couple of meats.

There'll probably be a bit of turkey there, probably a bit of ham maybe, but more the merrier, tasty.

I think it's important to also think.

Though that actually over Christmas now, Christmas is a season. It's not just the day anymore, is it? So we're not just looking at how we can celebrate one day.

And we can see that actually 3/4 of consumers are planning to have at least one additional festive meal this December, whether that is in their home, in that of a family members, they are going to be looking to have more than one Christmas celebration. And actually this is when it's really great news for red meat, because actually turkey takes more of a backseat at these occasions.

And you've got your beef, your lamb, your pork and gammon really stepping up.

People looking for something that little bit.

Different, not being so tied with that tradition and having turkey on that one day.

So we need to be really aware of this, particularly for our retailers and.

Processors, shoppers are looking for something a little bit more special than their everyday meal for longer than just that week before Christmas. So really just being aware about how we can make sure that there is supply there to cater for all these different meals.

And I think something else that's come.

Out from this piece of research, which is really interesting and something we talked about last week, convenience. So one in five people find Christmas cooking stressful.

I would firmly fall within that camp very much Passing the buck and get my husband to do the cooking for me. But what we are then seeing is actually we've got about a fifth of people as well looking to purchase these pre prepared proteins for.

And this is even stronger for those that are aged 18 to 34, which thankfully I also still fit within that category.

And this is when we're expecting ready.

To cook and sous vide options to really benefit.

So even though they've got that higher.

Price tag, they're going to make that Christmas cooking that little bit easier.

We're also seeing that air fryers are.

Going to be taking even more of a starring role. So 41% of us plan to use one for cooking at least part of our Christmas dinner.

So really looking for easy fuss free.

Dishes, making sure that we can get that really tasty meal with all the.

Trimmings delivered in a really quick and.

Easy way to do it. And remember we were talking about that viral one 95 pound beef Wellington earlier this year.

It is showing that that might be a popular option and signs that shoppers are looking for that little bit of indulgence without the stress. Can't forget about dairy though, now can we? So let's move on to that sweet stuff and cheesy. That's very important too.

Desserts are actually going to be factoring a little bit more of a battleground area for that nostalgia and indulgence.

So thinking Christmas puddings, mince pies and Christmas cake all vying as being those top contenders for Christmas dinner desserts, that was hard to say than it should have been. And importantly, what pairs really well with those custard and cream? And actually that's seen as essential for around a third of us.

And if my dad's listening, I haven't forgotten that Stilton and Wensleydell are also firm favourites with Christmas cake. Although that might be a little bit of a niche moment rather than a trend to look for.

But it is showing that dairy really.

Does have its moment at Christmas. And cheese, it is definitely my Christmas hero.

And we also see that 8 out.

Of 10 consumers are planning on eating at least the same, if not more cheese than usual at this Christmas time.

So thinking cheese boards are going to.

Be stacked with Cheddar Brie Stilton and that's going to be essential for over a third of households.

So really thinking perhaps those cheese selection packs that you see in retailers could be a great option for a lot of people, because who doesn't love that convenient way to indulge in a variety of flavors?

So that's my Christmas predictions all wrapped up. I'd love to hear how that compares with perhaps how you might be celebrating.

So if you want to send us.

A message on socials or to our emails, the email address is agshowdb.orguk. You're listening to the Ag show with me, Charlotte Hannah and producer Martin.

I feel it's that time of the show, producer Martin, when field agents might be making an appearance.

Absolutely. It's jargon busting time. It's field agents. It's now got its own theme tune. No finger clicking necessary here.

It's field as in F I, E, L, D. I know that's how you spell field, but this actually stands for farming Industry Explained Language decoded. Yes, we made up a pointless acronym to help demystify those other confusing farming terms already out there. We had the news round up earlier.

There was a story that I had spotted which was an absolute field day for you field agents, because it was Rumour Targets Task Force. So that's the Responsible Use of Medicines in Agriculture Alliance.

It was their Targets Task Force, which is a ttf, and they'd unveiled a its third set of AMU targets. That's AMU antimicrobial use and not emu, which is of course a flightless bird endemic to Australia.

Anyway, Agent Hannah, this is the first time you've been called into action. I'm giving you insetting versus offsetting. Away you go.

That's a great one. And that comes from the land of carbon emissions and, and greenhouse gas emissions and how companies are reducing them and dealing with them.

So there's two big ways that companies deal with their carbon emissions. There's carbon offsetting and there's carbon in setting. So they sound kind of similar, but they operate in different ways.

So offsetting is when a company essentially pays for projects somewhere else, for example, like planting forest or funding renewable energy schemes overseas to essentially cancel out the pollution that they create. So it's kind of outside of their supply chain. And that is where the key difference is to insetting.

So insetting, by contrast, is about making changes and improvements within your supply chain.

So for example, a company that relies heavily on agriculture, implementing things like agroforestry, sustainable farming practices or other kind of mechanisms to minimise soil erosion or sequester carbon, for example. So those are the kind of key differences offsetting can help with when emissions are unavoidable, whereas insetting kind of aims for deeper change.

So kind of cutting emissions at source. So offsetting helps balance your Carbon books. Whereas insetting helps you basically rewrite how these books are made.

Thank you very much, Agent Hannah. And if anybody out there would like to have some farming terms demystified, then all you got to do is get in touch with the show. Akshowhdb.orguk.

We'Re going to talk about Christmas again. Charlotte, could you do the honours?

Here's the season for some festive lights and big machinery.

Yes, that's right. We're talking about Christmas tractor runs. You've got to love them.

And we're joined today by the farmer behind the award winning sheepy charity Christmas Tractor Run, which makes its way through Coventry and Warwickshire market, Martin Brandreth. Martin, welcome to the show.

Hello there. Nice to be on.

So, Martin, your tractor run is rather infamous, I believe. So could you sort of tell us why you started it?

Yeah, so it started actually from a place of a bit of sadness really. We lost the committee member to a brain tumor.

We wanted to do something so we did a little summer tractor run for him to raise a little bit of money for the hospice.

When we were actually at that talking after it, we're like, this would work if we could do something a little bit different and actually bring the general public a little bit more into it. And yeah, so we thought, oh, we could do, we could dress them up with Christmas lights and saw a few people had done it on the continent. It was good.

We didn't quite realize how big it would be. We thought we'd probably have about 500 people come and watch us. Might raise a thousand pound for charity. But yeah, it's just grown really.

So how much have you raised so far, Martin, with your tractor runs this year?

Should be, I think, our seventh Christmas tractor run and we're hoping to break the 100,000 pound mark this time. Time for the total across the years.

We altered it slightly during COVID because we, we started off with it being a small event and then during COVID we made it something to try and almost instead of the money side, just try and give back and try and give the general public something.

As a farming community, we do a lot for charity and a lot for the community, but sometimes people don't really realize it and we thought we could do this and make our area really think about us and really enjoy something that doesn't cost them any money.

I've been to a couple of Christmas tractor runs and the atmosphere is just fantastic and all the horns and the lights. I know, it's brilliant. How, how easy was it, Martin? To get farmers on board.

Yeah, quite easy to be fair. It's all developed. You know, first.

First year most people stuck probably two or three sets of lights on the tractor and you just had like battery lights on it. And we probably the first year we had about 30 tractors. 30 or 40. Now we have to restrict the numbers to how many enter.

We rather have fewer really well dressed than lots of not well dressed. We want to make sure that it doesn't take really longer than 10 to 15 minutes to go past you. So getting people involved was. Was really quite easy.

As everything is in farming, it's always a competition. One looks at the other, one goes, I could do better than that.

And then the next thing you know you've got inverters in the cabs, you've got a Jenny on the trailer. You got, you know, it's like you're powering the center of Coventry with Christmas lights.

What's the most outlandish get up you've seen in a tractor run?

Oh yeah, we've got quite a few on our run now that put their own snow machines on and one of them made a snow machine on a top of a sprayer so they had an unlimited amount of water. It was good. And you know, you're just going past people and it's almost like they were going to a foam party rather than snow. Snow.

The experience when you're actually driving around is something that like you never really can explain to people until you do it. The hairs stand up on the back of your neck so much all the way around.

And also by the time you get to the end of the run your arm is ready to drop off because you're just waving all the time and it's just like. Yeah. And people are shouting and you know you've got the cap to cabs closed but the kids are just screaming and it's like they're here.

So it sounds like the public have really embraced them then.

Really have.

Wow.

In the height of it like just after Covid you'd go down the roads and the roads would be probably five or six deep with people. We are very fortunate where we are are. Yeah, we're very urban for this kind of thing actually.

The interaction between the farmer and the general public is definitely needed. It's just on our doorstep. You know, if you. If you're in the middle of a countryside, you wouldn't have quite the pull.

It's a really good way to get out in the community and connect with people that might not necessarily be that close to farming.

So for those of us that maybe have watched a tractor run, but have never actually done a tractor run, let alone organize one, what goes into organising a tractor room? Because I guess you have to, you know, contact the local authorities and get things signed off and approved.

Our area is really supportive. The police, the local councils love us doing it and want us to do it. So they put the right things in place when we contact them.

Just double checking that everything's safe and make sure that we are doing things, doing things right. But it's not too bad. We've got done more or less the identical two runs for the past three years. We added Coventry three years ago.

We didn't used to do Coventry, it just flows. So we kind of do Rolling Road Rocks now, which we'd never used to. We used to just rely on stewards blocking things, which works incredibly well.

Well, all that work sounds like it's paid off, Marcin, because you've won an award, haven't you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very fortunate. Someone nominated me for the CWR fundraiser award and, yeah, managed somehow to win it, you know. Very, very proud.

So your tractor ran coming up on the 12th and 13th of December, is it?

Yes, that's right.

If you don't mind just reminding everyone your route for those two dates and what sort of times they could be perhaps catching you.

Friday is the villages and towns around North Warwickshire into Leicestershire and Atherston. That area we will be meeting from about half three, four o' clock to get ready and then leave for the route around 5 o'. Clock.

Then Saturday we are around Bedworth and Eaton, Coventry and the surrounding villages that way and again starting the same time. It should be a great event.

We've already got nearly 100 tractors booked in across the two nights, so, you know, that's not 100 per night, but it's probably about 60 or 70 at the moment. I haven't started dressing ours yet. We put four in ourselves last year. I don't know how, but I managed to like start decorating two weeks before.

But this time it's not looking lightly, so it might be a bit more of a panic.

So do you have a theme for how you like to dress yours up or Is it just however the mood takes you on the day?

Yeah, a little bit. A little bit. I went to the range the other day and bought a load more light. Both indented the van balance a little bit, but yeah. So we.

So if anyone watches ours, we tend to, between the four of us, tend to be the ones with the minions on the trailer. I tend to take a trailer around and dress the trailer up as well. So it's a little bit like a carnival trailer in a way, with Christmas lights.

Yeah, it's just. Just getting your head around it. And this time we've actually done like a little mini competition for kids to enter to decorate my trailer.

So we've got them to make their own character Christmas character. And then somehow I've got to then build it.

Hopefully.

I don't really know what they're gonna be.

Oh, that sounds amazing. You're gonna have to let us know how it goes and send us photos. I think now that we can share with our listeners for.

Yeah.

What you had to create and whether we can even get guess what it is maybe will be the telling point too.

I think that's all we've got time for. Charlotte. On this episode, we've covered some meaty topics today. We've talked about the budget and what it means for agriculture.

We've talked about Christmas, from consumer trends all the way through to tractor runs. So I think we'll leave it there. See you next week.

Bye.

Sa.