Colin Rayner, an arable farmer in Berkshire, describes himself as a dyed-in-the-wool conservative.
He is a lifelong Tory voter, a member of the party since the 1980s, and the president of his local Conservative association. But given what he sees as a litany of failures from the Conservative government to support farmers, Rayner is seeing red.
He fears farmers will abandon the Tories in huge numbers at the next general election and that, under a Labour government, rural communities could end up with an even worse deal.
“Farmers think that the Conservative party has abandoned them, when they have given them loyal support for many many years,” he says.
Rayner’s family have been farming the same land in Berkshire since 1551, and, along with his cousin, he currently farms just under 2,000 acres, growing wheat, barley, maize and oilseed rape. They keep a small herd of Highland cattle and Belted Galloway to supplement their income. His three daughters – triplets aged 26 – are primed to take over.
Now he fears he won’t have a viable farm for them to inherit. It has become harder and harder to make a living, thanks to rising input costs, low supermarket prices and farming policy that, as he sees it, disincentivises farmers from doing what they have done for centuries: put food on the table.