After the Farming Community Network told financial planning specialists Hoxton Wealth that the three biggest problems they’re receiving on their helpline are affects to mental health, family relationships and financial planning, the company set out to bring a team of experts together to offer support to the agricultural community.
Featured on a new documentary short on the firm’s Hoxton Life channel, farmers describe themselves as feeling “on edge, uncertain, lost and really scared.”
To watch the 10 minute documentary, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi1UE3aCJOY
In the film, Graham Ashford from the Farming Community Network, a charity that supports farmers, says calls to its helpline increasingly reflect the financial pressures that farmers are under.
“Family relationships can be a part of that mix. Mental well-being is a factor in all of that as well. So those are our top three,” says Graham.
“The farming community is very worried at the moment about the future. And I think a lot of farmers feel undervalued. We see ourselves as being people who are producing food for the nation. We have two roles. One is to produce food for the nation, and one is to look after the environment. And when you get news about inheritance tax increases or national insurance increases or whatever it might be, you’ve got to find that money from somewhere. And how do you do that? For a lot of farmers, asset-rich, cash-poor. I’m not saying every farmer is struggling. Some are making a very good success of business and doing well. But there are others that are finding the pinch getting greater.”
This is something that is echoed by Teresa Dunning,a financial planning director at Hoxton Wealth, who specialises in the agricultural community. Shesays:
“I have quite an elderly couple that I work with, and they’ve got a son and daughter and in turn grandchildren and they have come to part in their lives where they couldn’t do the dairy farming between them anymore. Their children didn’t want to take it on so they had to make a brave decision to tenant that farm out to contractors but they’re paid an income for that so they can stay on the farm, enjoy everything around them knowing that their income is going to be secure.”
With these and others in mind, Teresa brought together a team of experts for a farming-specific seminar.
“I just felt that with the knowledge that I had and also through my associates who are solicitors and accountants, together we could put something on that would help them in one place so instead of them having to reach out to a financial planner, to a solicitor, to an accountant, a tax advisor, I could bring all these people together in one place with all the key messages, all the good information that they need to take away.”
One farming couple who appear on the documentary said:
“As a couple, we don’t understand financial and tax problems and if we didn’t have these experts around as helping us with the business, then we just plod on day to day, and I don’t know what had happened when the time came to retire.”
“You feel so much more comfortable when somebody’s sitting across a table and explaining it in not complicated terms so we can understand them. This is best for you and not best for you and this is how it works, and I think you should do this or shouldn’t do that. It just fills you with a bit more confidence. There are people there, so do use them. They are there to help you, as I say, as experts at the end of the phone. Definitely. Please do. “
