Joel Woolf Rural Consultancy

09/09/2025

My latest blog considers why it feels so hard to get farming business to get to grips with succession planning and how there might be a better way to get farming families to engage with something that can either make or break them.

I have been rather busy of late which means I have not had sufficient chance to marshal my thoughts on the various ongoing issues impacting agriculture and rural life in order to write a blog.

16/07/2025

It has been a busy few months for me which has meant limited time to write a blog. My latest blog looks at the, so far rather underreported, proposed changes to commercial rent reviews and some potentially unintended consequences.

https://woolfrural.co.uk/blog/f/end-of-the-line-all-change

21/03/2025

The application process for the new Commissioner for Agricultural Tenancies closes on 24 March, having only opened on the 14 March.

In my latest blog I have put some thought to the essential qualities that whoever ends up in the role will need in order to succeed.

12/03/2025

MAPA - Make Agriculture Profitable Again.

Given the latest bomb shell dropped by the Government last night in relation to SFI it is very easy to get trapped into a doom loop in relation to the future of farming.

That needn't be the case though, all we have to do is forget optimism and pessimism and look to possibilism for the solutions.

Following my last blog I was in conversation with someone who to my surprise had actually read it. They agreed with what I had written and then fairly (or unfairly depending on your point of view) challenged me to say h...

19/02/2025

I am really tired of the unchanging rhetoric on teh IHT changes. No one I speak to has ever had any thought that government is going to changes its mind on IHT. All I can think of is a record with a pip stuck in it.

Is there another way - well I think there is.

Since 31 October last year the attacks by the industry in relation to the changes to APR have been the same. There has been no change to any underlying arguments or approach taken. No looking at why the arguments are n...

11/02/2025

The Government recently released its Land Use Strategy consultation. I started to respond but as I read more I got to the position where I was questioning the utility of the consultation itself because it was not abundantly clear what the point was and much of what was written appeared to be "word salad" in many places.

But it triggered me to return to thinking about the potential changing nature of landlords of farm tenancies. Have a read of my latest blog and let me know your thoughts; do agree or disagree?

I spend a lot of time thinking about farm tenancies. Asking myself questions such as why the flexibility of the ATA95 is not used more to better effect; why is there a persistence in the document entered into not actual...

14/01/2025

My first post of 2025 looks at the speech made by the SoS for Defra last week to the Oxford Farming Conference. Reading between the lines there is an apparent dichotomy with what was said.

https://woolfrural.co.uk/blog/f/fact-fiction-or-politics

18/12/2024

A week today it will be Christmas Day and a week after that it will be 2025. This is my last blog post for this year. 2024 has been quite a ride - hopefully 2025 will be less volatile, but who knows.

Thank you to everyone who has read and commented on my blogs over the last year.

Merry Christmas.

05/12/2024

The fall out from the Budget continues. I don't think that there are many people out there who can see any good out of the changes to BPR/APR.

Except there might be. For many years I have felt that the tenanted sector in agriculture has struggled to shake off old stereotypes and been able to show really that it is time for farming to follow the rest of the economy in terms of how it occupies property for the purposes of business. Perhaps that time has now come...

Of all the pictures to choose for a blog about agriculture and the business of farming, the one for this blog probably raises some eyebrows. What possibly can a warehouse, basically a really big shed, have to do with ag...

14/11/2024

The dust is barely settling on the budget and there continues to be large amount of outrage at the changes to APR relief from inheritance Tax.

I have decided to split my commentary on the budget in three separate posts which are all live on my website.



https://woolfrural.co.uk/blog/f/budget-analysis-part-1---dont-panic

https://woolfrural.co.uk/blog/f/budget-analysis-part-2---its-not-about-apr-stupid

I am sure that many farmers and landowners (and even some professionals) identify with the person in the image. Afterall, the budget appears on first glance to have increased uncertainty for farming and made life much m...