A challenging year behind, a New Year ahead

For farmers across the region, 2024 will be remembered as a particularly challenging year due to the weather. Continuous rainfall over the summer months left field conditions poor and made silage harvesting difficult. Thankfully improved autumn weather allowed winter fodder to be gathered up.

A difficult autumn budget introduced changes to inheritance tax, bringing great uncertainty and concern to the future succession of family farms. However, as 2024 draws to a close and we move into 2025, it is great to see that commodity prices for milk, beef, and lamb all look strong.

In terms of insurance, 2024 has been a year of rapidly increasing premiums across all lines of business, from private car and dwelling houses to farm combined and agricultural vehicles. Increasing claims costs along with reduced insurer capacity for Northern Ireland forced premiums into a ‘hard’ market where underwriters were asking for increased rate. Hopefully, the Northern Ireland insurance market is now starting to stabilise. While there may still be premium increases in 2025, the level of increase is showing signs of easing, which will be very welcomed by policyholders.

The New Year is also a good time to review insurance covers. If you haven’t reviewed your farm combined or agricultural vehicle policies for some time, why don’t you contact the agricultural team at AbbeyAutoline to see how they can help?

Our dedicated Agricultural Team are available to help discuss your insurance needs and to make sure you have the insurance cover that you require. Our team can be contacted on 08000 66 55 44 or visit www.abbeyautoline.co.uk/farm-insurance.

Farming is always unpredictable, whether its weather, legislation or prices, but our Northern Ireland farmers are a resilient breed no matter what 2025 brings. We would like to wish all our clients a very Happy New Year and best wishes for 2025, we look forward to continuing to support and protect the local farming industry in the year ahead.