Ask a young person trying to get into farming what stands in their way, and the answer rarely changes. Land. Across Kent and Sussex there are more young farmers with the skills and the appetite to farm than there are acres available to them, and the gap is widening.
The numbers behind that are stark. The average age of a UK farmer now sits around 59, and land without a house or buildings on it, what agents call bare land, regularly makes £10,000 an acre or more in the South East. Council farms and starter tenancies, once the traditional first rung, have thinned to almost nothing. For a generation that grew up being told farming was a closed shop, the route in has rarely looked narrower.
The challenge for young farmers in Kent and Sussex
The finances of getting started have changed as well. The Basic Payment Scheme, which underpinned farm incomes for decades, has gone. Inheritance tax changes have pushed succession up the agenda on family farms, and in some cases frozen it, because the decisions made in the next few years will shape who farms that land for the next forty. Meanwhile input costs, borrowing costs and consumer expectations all point the same way: tighter margins, higher standards, more scrutiny.
“Talk to the young people actually doing it, at Young Farmers Club meetings, at Hadlow or Plumpton, or at the county shows, and the mood is not defeat,” says Toby Trotman of our rural team. “It is adaptation. They know the industry pays for different things than it paid their parents for, and plenty of them are better placed for that than the generation above them.”
Environmental income: a new enterprise on the farm
The next generation of farmers is entering an industry that pays for different things than it paid their parents for, and the clearest example is the environment. Producing environmental outcomes is now a genuine enterprise in its own right. The Sustainable Farming Incentive rewards practices many young farmers learned as standard at college, while biodiversity net gain, carbon and natural capital markets are creating roles and revenue that did not exist ten years ago.
More routes onto the land for new entrants to farming
Diversification, once a dirty word at the farm kitchen table, is now often the business case that makes a first venture stack up. Share farming and contract farming agreements offer new entrants routes onto land without buying it. And the skills gap runs in the young farmer’s favour, because data, precision technology, environmental compliance and direct-to-consumer marketing all reward people who grew up with them.
The farming of Kent and Sussex is unusually varied, from the fruit belt around the Swale and Faversham to the arable land of Thanet, and from the pasture of the Weald to the big arable blocks of the South Downs. That variety means more niches, more diversified enterprises, and more first opportunities for young people in agriculture than a single-sector region could offer.
Farming succession: what the older generation can do
Most young farmers will not get their start by buying land; they will get it through a conversation: a tenancy carved out, a share farming agreement, a contract arrangement, or a succession plan made early rather than left in the drawer. The inheritance tax changes have made those conversations urgent for tax reasons, but the better reason was always there. Land needs someone ready to farm it well.
For landowners thinking about the long term, the question is worth turning around. It is not whether the next generation is ready for the land. It is whether the arrangements are in place to let them prove it.
Our rural teams work with farming families across Kent, Sussex and Surrey on succession, tenancies and farm business arrangements. If that conversation is one you have been putting off, we can help you start it.
Planning for the Next Generation?
The question is rarely whether the next generation is ready. More often, it’s whether the right arrangements are in place. Our rural teams can help with succession planning, farm business structures and tenancy agreements.