Why don't farmers have to pay rates on their land like any other business does?

Also, do all these farmers holding regular car-boot sales with hundreds of stalls each paying an entry fee, declare that the land is not being used for agricultural purposes any more? Somehow I think not. Not to mention their declaration of earnings for income tax purposes.

Originally posted by Mo
Why don't farmers have to pay rates on their land like any other business does?

Also, do all these farmers holding regular car-boot sales with hundreds of stalls each paying an entry fee, declare that the land is not being used for agricultural purposes any more? Somehow I think not. Not to mention their declaration of earnings for income tax purposes. thats interesting,i know they get discounts on things but this is a surprise,looks like the big landowners are cashing in on this deal

Farmers don’t have it easy and any subsidy or exemption they get is more than their entitlement for keeping the country side the way it is and for maintaining access to their land for ramblers. How many private companies would give you right of way through their land / offices?

I think farmers have it hard enough in this country considering their profession has the highest suicide rate for any profession!

How many people would take a job where you get no holidays, you are on call 24/7 365 days a year and you work from dawn until dusk!

I don't understand why the government gives so much to farmers. If the job is too hard or doesn't pay enough then they should get a better job - coal mining and steelmaking had their subsidies stopped years ago so why should the farmers be different.

Because of them, our food is twice as expensive as the world price and our taxes are higher. All for a working population of about 200,000.

And farmers don't "give" right of way through their land - if there is a public right of way through industrial land then factory owners don't get subsidies for that.

PoW is basically correct. There is little ongoing justification for the level of subsidies that farmers get.
The reason they still get any is the CAP which is closely tied up with the EU. We can't currently get out of one without leaving the other, and despite it's weakenesses, it has too many benefits to leave without a damn good reason.

Originally posted by serapis
Farmers don’t have it easy and any subsidy or exemption they get is more than their entitlement for keeping the country side the way it is

You mean like ripping all the hedges out to make the Prairie type, vast, hard on the eye landscapes that ruin habitats and ecosystems and then............... get paid for replanting them :loopy:

You mean like poisoning the water courses with chemicals they use on the crops?