Agriculture & Rural Business Newsletter - January 2021

Looking back at 2020 and forward to the future.

Welcome to the first of the MHA Agricultural Newsletters and farewell to what can only be described as a tumultuous year.

For most people 2020 will be remembered as the year of Covid 19, lockdowns, furloughing and in some cases, acute financial hardship. For the agricultural sector, it may, in the long term, end up being equally memorable but perhaps for different reasons.

Certainly, one should not play down the impact of the pandemic on the sector. Some businesses, particularly in horticultural production, saw considerable disruption in their staffing, and in the early days there were real problems on some dairy farms as contracts were unilaterally reduced or terminated.

However, for many agricultural businesses, so far at least, the impact of the virus has been relatively muted. Most arable farmers do, by the nature of the job, lead a fairly isolated existence, so lockdowns have not led to major changes in the day’s work.

Check out below what this edition holds:

• Pain Today, Jam Tomorrow?
• Client Feature: From Potatoes to Pigs
• Can British agriculture survive in world market?
• Shooting - Don’t shoot yourself in the foot with HMRC

Find out more

Your local MHA firm would be keen to discuss with you or advise upon any of the matters raised in this edition and look forward to hearing from you