It’s good the government has committed to maintain funding for the Environmental Land Management Schemes for another year. This presents a chance to take stock. Defra needs to publish the promised impact assessment and target its resources at helping the whole food and farming system become fairer, more secure and resilient. Ministers must look at the food companies that profit from depleting the value of the UK economy – polluting waterways, harming nature, promoting unhealthy junk food. Polluters should pay the real cost of their operations, not pass it off on to the public purse.

But as part of a farming family, as someone arguing for joined-up, inclusive farming policy, the handling of the agricultural property relief announcement has made me upset.

A 20% inheritance tax on farming assets over £1m will not be as destructive as the outcry has suggested. Advisers are pointing out that existing tax reliefs and careful, pro-active planning will help most farming businesses avoid unbearable bills, though we cannot minimise the massive potential consequences for tenants. Meanwhile, this all might encourage earlier conversations about succession and allow the next generation to step up. Those could be genuinely positive effects.

Whatever the decision’s merits, politicians would be wise to pay attention to the strength of feeling that’s erupted in the past 24 hours. The language from the NFU, CLA and TFA has been ferocious. It’s being matched online, in WhatsApp groups, and I imagine on kitchen tables across the countryside.

Farmers are saying they feel let down by a Labour government that cosied up to agriculture before July’s election. They’ve adopted the farming union rhetoric of ‘food security is national security’. Hours after the budget, Defra minister Daniel Zeichner promised his commitment to farmers remained ‘steadfast’. The outrage is not reactionary; it’s come from farmers sensing the cognitive dissonance.

More than 400,000 people work in agriculture in the UK. Millions more are connected to farms through their work or ties of family and neighbourhood. The agricultural community has worryingly high rates of loneliness, depression and suicide. Returns from growing food are perilously squeezed, farmers are grappling with global volatility and extreme weather, and the sector is negotiating the biggest policy change in generations.

Forget about sympathy. This is about being practical. Farmers manage 70% of UK land. All of us desperately need them to be at the forefront of restoring nature, cutting pollution, and tackling climate change. Just when government, industry, finance, and farmers need to be working together on existential challenges, I worry this episode has ripped up trust that’s been steadily built. We now risk burning time and emotion arguing about tax relief.

Ministers could have taken the heat from this argument before it began. Instead of simple promises about standing up for farmers, they could have sensitively explained the good reasons for the proposed change, how negative effects are being measured and mitigated, and how it fits into an optimistic, long-term plan. They can still do this now.

There’s a general lesson here. Farming and food are never just about numbers and nutrition. People, feelings and culture always matter.