Tractor rally planned for Dover as Kent Fairness for Farmers and Save British take action

Tractors will gather at a Kent farm tomorrow morning before staging a rally around Dover to demand the Government stop betraying British farmers and rural communities.

Organisers say the Labour Party promised a new deal for farming to improve food security by negotiating a new Veterinary agreement with the EU and ensure protection from lower standard imports. But Rachel Reeves and Sir Keir Starmer instead betrayed farmers with their ‘disastrous budget which delivered a poisonous cocktail and a hammer blow to an industry which is already on its knees after years of turbulence and being taken for granted.’

The organisers of the rally are calling on the Goverbment to

- Axe Inheritance Tax

- Get an EU veterinary agreement

- RULE OUT a USA FTA and sell off to BlackRock

- Reverse fast-track removal of BPS

- U-turn on pick-up tax

- Scrap carbon tax on fertiliser

- Stop substandard & illegal imports

- Make the supply chain fair again

- Strengthen labelling to protect UK products

- Protect and strengthen our weakening food security!

A spokesperson stated: “This Wednesday farmers will begin to escalate the fight back against this government that continues to insult us with inaccurate data and lies. Keir Starmer had the audacity to make emotional promises to farmers at an NFU conference which we can all see now were disingenuous lies. British farming is the key component of our largest manufacturing industry, food and drink. Delivering the death knell to this industry will ensure a loss of food security, leaving Britain to rely on imports damaging our national security. This is a total loss of control.”

Kent Fairness For Farmers organiser and beef farmer Matt Cullen added: “It’s time for farmers to stand up and fight back! Time to show the government that things will escalate more if they don’t sit down and talk to us!”

David Catt: Veg grower &Wholesaler, Maidstone said: “I am protesting in Dover against the new APR & BPR taxes announced in the budget. This is the final death knell in family farming after decades of bad farming policies that have squeezed farming income to nothing. A tax targeted at wealthy investors dodging death duties. But in fact hits the family farms that can least afford it!

“A way to resolve this would be to say a farm has to be worked for at least 10 years prior to the death and at least 7-10 years after. This would be exempt. It would hit the investors who would sell after death and pay the capital gains and death duties. It would preserve generational family farming. There was a very good reason that these reliefs were put in place and have stayed for such a long time. To keep continuity of a stable food production! Essential for national food security.”

Founder of campaign group Save British Farming, Liz Webster, said: "Farmers in India, New Zealand, France, Germany, Canada, Italy and other European nations have stood up to governments intent on harming their industry. Now is the time for British farmers to rise up and win this fight once and for all. No one voted to destroy British farming, food and countryside.

“This Government has unleashed a really nasty culture war with their budget. Are they hoping to motivate envy to back destruction of our farms which produce healthy and sustainable food and care for our countryside to sign a deal with Trump which delivers chlorinated chicken and hormone fed beef?”

Colin Rayner, a farmer from Berkshire, put it bluntly: “It’s about time the people of this country woke up! Starmer’s betrayal isn’t just a slap in the face to farmers—it’s a direct assault on the future of British agriculture. These are families who’ve sacrificed for generations to preserve their land. Farms bombed in WWII. Lives lost in Flanders. Parents scraping by in the 1970s just to hold onto their farms.

“And Starmer thinks he can waltz in, sell them out, and we’ll all roll over? Think again. The reality is stark: even if he sold every farm in Britain, it wouldn’t be enough to paper over the NHS’s waste and mismanagement. This isn’t about funding healthcare; it’s about stripping rural Britain of its lifeblood.

“The British public needs to hear this loud and clear—without farmers, there’s no food, no future, no country worth fighting for. Starmer’s hour of lies will come back to haunt him. It’s time to wake up and fight for the farmers who’ve fed this nation for centuries.”