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Always look on the Bright Side of life

“Always look on the bright side of life” is something learnt at mother’s knee, and by golly, it needs applying to farming today. How easy it is to focus on the cock-ups (or conspiracies) surrounding the Single Payment debacle and the floundering RPA, and easy too to point fingers of blame at Lord Bach and Margaret Beckett.
Today’s Bright Side is the forthcoming reform of agricultural tenancies, which will remove the requirement for a potential successor to earn a living primarily from agricultural work on the holding, and at the same time frees up agreements, so landlords and tenants are able to reach their own agreements.
I’ve been on farms where the agricultural work restriction was very much upper most in the tenants mind. Tenants still do often feel vulnerable. Land agents can be aggressive particularly if they want an elderly tenant to move out and don’t want a successor to take the holding over. Agents can be forensic in their zeal to find any kind of departure from the written agreement if they are wanting to take back land, and the hapless tenant can be left high and dry as a result.
That’s why joining the TFA is such an important step form any tenant, as the cost is modest and the rewards potentially huge.