How can farmers walk so far in wellies?

A farm over 5 hectares has permitted development rights on any agricultural building over 10 years old under part q and part r of the planning laws. The way that barns are valued in practice is the price of that barn post conversion into a house less the cost of conversion. Ie if the house is worth 400k finished the market value may be in the region of 200-25k even if currently it only yields 15k Pa to keep your cows in. If you have 4 of those on your farm you’re at the 1m threshold. Add on 100 acres at 8000 per acre (it’s on the low side for my area, but the larger the parcel the lower the price per acre) and you’ve got to nearly 1.8 million. An old detached farmhouse with gardens can easily run 750k - 1m you’re at 2.5m-2.8m. Tractors and machinery could easily be valued at 100k or more. Your tax bill could easily be (2.6m - 1m threshold) *20% = 320k IHT bill Then the value of your livestock at market value. Add in all of the consumables that a farm would keep on hand. The valuations quite quickly escalate fora business that has very tight margins. Obviously everything above excludes debt and assumes everything is paid off already. If it’s debt funded then the cost of the debt is deducted. The margins in sheep as an example. Might be 60 gross per head and you might have 500 sheep on 100 acres which is 30k out of that comes your direct operating expenses. The margins are razor thin and you’ve got no idea when you start what the market price would be. The same goes for arable farms but the risks are even higher because you’re at the mercy of the weather more so than livestock. How many years would it take to pay off 320k IHT bill on 30k Pa? You can’t. You’ll have to sell off land (320k/8000) you sell off 40 acres. Now you can’t even keep the sheep that yielded 30k and your farm is no longer viable. Obviously some farms would rotate crops and livestock or have multiple on the go to provide a level of risk management but the margins in most things are similarly thin and the risks are the same, because you need more land to do that.