Standing in blinding sunlight on an archipelago above the Arctic Circle, the photographer Christian Åslund looked in shock at a glacier he had last visited in 2002. It had almost completely disappeared.

Two decades ago Greenpeace asked Åslund to use photographs taken in the early 20th century, and photograph the same views in order to document how glaciers in Svalbard were melting due to global heating. The difference in ice density in those pictures, taken almost a century apart, was staggering.

This summer he visited those same places again, 22 years later, to find that the glaciers had visibly shrunk again.

“In 2002, climate change wasn’t as well known as it is now, so that was a compete shock when we saw it,” he says. “And then I didn’t know what to expect going back this time. But seeing all the glaciers, we really saw the difference from these last 22 years. There is a massive amount of glacier ice that has disappeared.”

The disappearance of glaciers was one of the first signs that global heating caused by fossil fuel burning was rapidly affecting conditions on Earth. “It is sad,” says Åslund, “especially when you’re holding the historical picture in your hand and you see the whole fjord was from the glaciers and where the glaciers met, and you’re standing in the landscape when they were almost gone, in the same fjords.”

The weather during his visit was also strikingly warm. “When we were there it was the hottest month ever recorded for that area. So you are standing in the Arctic in a T-shirt and the glaciers are almost gone, and that is sad. It is heating up at a rapid speed, the Arctic. I did expect a retreat of the glacier but not as much as we encountered. It was a shock.”

Thousands of giant spiders that can grow to the size of a human hand are thriving in the UK, thanks to a successful breeding programme from Chester zoo.

The fen raft spider is a harmless arachnid that plays a vital role in aquatic ecosystems, but 15 years ago was on the brink of extinction because of habitat loss.

Chester zoo worked with the RSPB to raise hundreds of baby spiders, keeping them separate in test tubes so that they did not eat one another.

The spiders were hand-fed with tweezers in the zoo’s bio-secure breeding facility until they were big enough to be released into the wild.

This year, the spiders have had their best mating season on record, Chester zoo said, with the RSPB estimating that there are 10,000 breeding females across the UK.

According to London zoo, the stretched-out leg span of a fen raft spiders is typically 65-70mm – roughly the width of a human palm or the length of a newborn rat.

The zoo was also involved in the breeding programme, along with other members of BIAZA, the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

The spiders were hand-reared between 2011 and 2013, and later released into the wild. Chester zoo said it had helped to release “thousands” 10 years ago, adding “you can’t miss them, they grow to be the size of your hand!”

“We’re super proud to be part of this conservation breeding rescue programme, working alongside our friends at the RSPB to prevent the extinction of the fen raft spider,” the zoo said in a post on X.

Also known as the great raft spider, the semi-aquatic arachnids have a chocolate-brown body with cream stripes along the side and are able to walk on water. They live in unpolluted fens and marshes.

The first fen raft spider population in the UK was identified in 1956 by the arachnologist Dr Eric Duffey, at the source of the River Waveney in East Anglia.

“Of course, there is also nothing to fear from increased numbers of spiders,” Dave Clarke, who heads up London zoo’s Friendly Spider Programme, wrote in a blog post.

“This is a huge conservation success, both for the spiders and the wider habitat restoration driving the success. And more natural bio-controls out there (even if this species is never coming into human areas) are only a good thing.”

Off the west coast of Greenland, a 17-metre (56ft) aluminium sailing boat creeps through a narrow, rocky fjord in the Arctic twilight. The research team onboard, still bleary-eyed from the rough nine-day passage across the Labrador Sea, lower nets to collect plankton. This is the first time anyone has sequenced the DNA of the tiny marine creatures that live here.

Watching the nets with palpable excitement is Prof Leonid Moroz, a neuroscientist at the University of Florida’s Whitney marine lab. “This is what the world looked like when life began,” he tells his friend, Peter Molnar, the expedition leader with whom he co-founded the Ocean Genome Atlas Project (Ogap).

Moroz gestures toward Greenland’s glaciated valleys. The rapid warming here is replicating conditions from 600m years ago, when complex life forms began appearing. “We’re sailing through deep biological time right now,” he says.

Moroz and Molnar’s mission is to classify, observe, sequence and map 80% of the sea’s smallest creatures to learn more about ourselves, and the health of the planet.

Plankton and humans do not have much in common at first glance. But studying marine organisms has led to breakthrough understandings about our own brains and bodies. Observing the electrical discharges of jellyfish taught us how to restart the heart. Sea slugs showed us how memories form. Squid taught us how signals spread between different parts of the brain. Horseshoe crabs demonstrated how visual receptors work.

An unusual aspect of Moroz and Molnar’s research trips is that they are unlocking plankton’s secrets onboard sailing boats rather than engine–powered vessels – and they are not alone in this endeavour.

“Large oceanographic vessels can cost $100,000 [£77,000] a day, which can quickly bankrupt your research organisation,” says Chris Bowler, an oceanographer with France’s National Centre for Scientific Research and a scientific adviser to the Tara Ocean Foundation.

For the past two years he has collected plankton samples for the Microbiomes Mission, a research initiative to study micro-organisms in the ocean, onboard a 33-metre schooner. “Working from a sailboat is 50 times cheaper,” Bowler says.

That cost saving also allows researchers the luxury of time, which is imperative for finding the genetic commonalities and patterns that will reveal answers about human health. Bowler says it is important to analyse and observe these microscopic organisms interacting with each other and the world around them. That cannot happen in a lab back on land because the organisms are too fragile.

Low-carbon, readily available and easier to manoeuvre near to shore, sailing boats also “don’t vibrate, so you can do really precise work aboard”, says Molnar, who has captained Ogap voyages over more than 9,000 nautical miles.

The reason that microscopic marine life can teach us about our own development is convergent evolution. This is when unrelated organisms arrive at the same solution to a problem, such as how birds, beetles, butterflies and bats all adapted to fly, but did so at different times and in slightly different ways. Overlapping solutions provide common building blocks for everything from how to fold a protein to how to form a brain.

“Every organism that lives here today is a logbook of every single adaptation that made it successful,” Moroz says. “The brain is one of the most complicated structures in the universe. Yet 70% of our knowledge about how the brain works is thanks to marine creatures. Without them, many of today’s medicines would simply not exist.”

The reason he studies plankton is because their “logbook” is the longest – some single-celled marine organisms have been around for more than 3bn years. That means they have more tricks up their metaphorical sleeves than we do.

“Some groups of these marine species do not age, never develop cancers and they can fully regenerate when damaged. They are able to perform many tasks better than us,” Moroz says.

One way to take human medicine to the next level is to take our cues from these organisms. But first, we have to identify them. Ogap’s lofty mission would not have been possible 10 years ago; rapid technological advances have reduced the size of equipment, while satellite communications and AI have shrunk the timeframe for analysing results from months to minutes.

In Greenland, for example, Ogap kept marine organisms alive for several days on their sailing boat while sequencing their DNA during different stages of life. “We were able to watch them reproduce, decay, then repair themselves, even die, all while taking high-resolution video,” Molnar says.

The team then uploaded the data via Starlink to universities where scientists used AI to look for pattern recognition in the organisms’ DNA. “Literally within an hour, we would have results back on the sailboat,” Molnar says. “This type of work was simply science fiction 10 years ago.”

While the technology is new, using sailing boats to explore is a millennia-old human endeavour.

“There’s a long history of sailing to answer scientific questions,” says David Conover, the owner of ArcticEarth, the sailing boat Ogap used for its Greenland expedition. From Captain Cook’s anthropological discoveries in the Pacific to Darwin’s groundbreaking observations on natural selection onboard the Beagle, sailing boats have afforded many types of researchers the luxury of getting to far-flung parts of the world to deeply engage with their surroundings.

“The more time you can afford to be at sea, the more open you are to discovery,” Conover says.

The key now is to observe the cornucopia of unknown marine organisms before they disappear for ever. “By the time you finish your coffee tomorrow morning, between 20 and 100 species will have vanished for ever, including the wonderful solutions they were offered by nature, which is a huge loss for biomedical science,” Moroz says.

To continue documenting the wonders of tiny single-celled sea creatures, Ogap will head next to Patagonia, at the tip of South America. Eventually, Ogap’s genomic atlas will be digitised and made freely available, providing a baseline of marine biodiversity as well as valuable insights for the development of new medicines.

“Every day is a surprise,” Moroz says. “That is the finest part of all of these voyages – the level of excitement, of discovery. It’s so rich. It’s nonstop.”

Plans to build what would be the biggest onshore windfarm in England will move forward this week, the first since the Labour government lifted the de facto ban put in place by the Conservatives nine years ago.

An independent renewable energy developer has submitted plans to erect 21 wind turbines next to an existing windfarm near Greater Manchester.

While other onshore sites in England have more turbines, those at the proposed windfarm at Scout Moor would be more powerful because of technological advances that would enable more than 100 megawatts to be generated there.

That is enough electricity to power the equivalent of 100,000 homes and meet more than 10% of Greater Manchester’s domestic energy needs before the end of the decade.

This would help to meet the government’s target of doubling Britain’s onshore wind power capacity by 2030. That target alongside goals to triple its solar power capacity and quadruple its offshore wind capacity are part of a plan to create a zero-carbon electricity system in the 2030s.

The developer, Cubico Sustainable Investments, will set out its plans to build the new project alongside its proposal for a multimillion-pound community wealth fund to support local people.

If approved, the site would also be the fifth biggest onshore wind power producer in the UK, with the others all in Scotland, topped by the 539MW generated by the 215 turbines at Whitelee, south of Glasgow.

Plans for the Scout Moor site were shelved 10 years ago after a backlash against onshore windfarms in England prompted the then Tory government to put in place planning rules that in effect ruled out new developments.

David Swindin, the Cubico chief executive, said his team had been developing new projects “for about four years in anticipation of the rules changing” to allow further onshore windfarms to be built in England.

Cubico is one of the world’s largest privately owned renewables developers. It is one of many windfarm developers hoping to erect onshore turbines in England for the first time in almost a decade. Labour lifted the Tories’ de facto ban within 72 hours of coming into power in July.

Swindon said: “It was obvious that there was going to be pressure to change the rules, even for the Conservatives. And for some time it seemed likely that Labour would come to power. So we have been eagerly waiting for the moment that we can press the button.”

Peter Rowe, the project’s development manager, said the site was “one of the most ideal locations for a windfarm” in England thanks to its high wind speeds and close proximity to energy consumers in Greater Manchester. The location rules out the need for expensive grid upgrades to carry the electricity long-distances.

“Clearly we will be going into a public consultation [with the local community] very sensitively. The site itself has been used in the past for mining and quarrying, and the area has been at the heart of Britain’s industrial story. So what we’re putting forward is a modern reinterpretation of how the moors and uplands have been used historically,” he said.

James Robottom, the head of policy at Renewable UK, a trade association, said that since the government lifted the block on onshore windfarms in England, ambitious plans were beginning to come forward “with a strong emphasis on the new investment, jobs and benefit funds which they would bring to local communities”.

“Close consultation with these communities is a key element of every proposal, ensuring that local people have a strong voice in the planning process,” he added.

A government spokesperson said: “While we can’t comment on this specific case, onshore wind is crucial to making Britain a clean energy superpower, boosting the UK’s energy independence and protecting bill payers.”

An incendiary device hidden in a DHL package that caught fire in Germany in July was due to be sent by air to the UK as part of a suspected Russian sabotage plot that may also have been a dry run for a similar attack on the US and Canada.

The device, reported to have been secreted in shipments of massage pillows and erotic gadgets, started a fire on the ground in Leipzig that was feared to be capable of downing a plane – similar to a package that ignited at a DHL warehouse in Birmingham on 22 July.

Sources indicated the suspect package in Leipzig was also bound for the UK, though why the UK was chosen as the destination for the two devices, originally sent from Lithuania, is not fully clear.

An unconfirmed German report suggests they were addressed to fake recipients at real addresses in the UK, as were two other incendiary devices found in Poland, one of which Polish media said caught fire at a warehouse in Warsaw while the other was successfully intercepted.

Metropolitan police counter-terror officers declined to comment. The only official statement in the UK about the alleged plot was made last month, when counter-terror police confirmed a device had caught fire in Birmingham, nobody was hurt, and it was dealt with “by staff and the local fire brigade at the time”.

Four people were arrested in Poland as part of the alleged plot, it was announced last week, which the country’s chief prosecutor said was intended to commit sabotage using “camouflaged explosives and dangerous materials” in Europe. Two other individuals are also wanted by investigators in the country.

Another intention, according to the Polish authorities, was “to test the transfer channel” for similar parcels to be sent to the US and Canada, to see if similarly dangerous and destructive attacks could be reproduced elsewhere.

British police and officials, as well as their European counterparts in Germany, Poland and Lithuania, strongly suspect that Russia was behind the attacks as part of an effort to cause “mayhem” in the west in retaliation for western military support to Ukraine.

Last month, Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, warned that Russia’s GRU military intelligence appeared to be on “a sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets: we’ve seen arson, sabotage and more”.

His German counterpart, Thomas Haldenwang, told the Bundestag that had the Leipzig package started burning during a flight “it would have resulted in a crash”. Although Haldenwang did not say Russia was behind the fire when he gave evidence, he accused the Kremlin’s spy agencies of “putting people’s lives at risk”.

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the massage items in the suspect packages were booby trapped with a magnesium-based flammable substance. Magnesium fires are notoriously difficult to put out and are worsened if water is applied; special dry powder extinguishers should be used instead.

Russia has denied involvement in the alleged plot. “These are traditional unsubstantiated insinuations from the media,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the US newspaper.

Depending on whom you ask, they are the boost that Russian forces need to make a significant breakthrough in Ukraine, or they are simple cannon fodder, destined for repatriation in body bags.

After weeks of speculation, Nato and the Pentagon have confirmed that around 10,000 North Korean troops are in Russia, with most massing near Ukraine’s border in Kursk, where the Kremlin’s forces have struggled to repel a Ukrainian incursion.

US officials believe the North Koreans could enter the conflict within days, as the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, pleads with his country’s allies to “stop watching” while his troops prepare to confront a new and untested enemy.

It is too early to say how the Russian-North Korean “blood alliance” will change the dynamics of the conflict. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said Russia had been training them to use artillery, drones and “basic infantry operations, including trench clearing, indicating that they fully intend to use these forces in frontline operations”.

But not one of the young men drafted from Kim Jong-un’s regular army of around 1 million – the “strongest in the world”, according to Kim – have seen combat. And they will be fighting on unfamiliar territory, with new weapons and in uniforms bearing the flag of a country – Russia – they know little about.

While their arrival relieves pressure on Russia to draft more of its own citizens, with the US estimating that more than 500,000 Russians have been killed or wounded since the war started in February 2022 – experts believe the military dividends for the Kremlin will be limited.

North Korean pilots flew during the Vietnam war, and the country provided military advisers and air force personnel to Egypt during the Yom Kippur War in 1973, as well as military aid to Syria.

But North Korea has not fought in a major war since the early 1950s, when a three-year conflict between North and South ended in an uncomfortable truce but not a peace treaty.

The soldiers, thought to be mostly in their teens or early 20s, have been trained in mountainous North Korea and have no experience of the large, flat battlefields of Ukraine, according to experts.

Russia appears to have armed more than 7,000 North Korean soldiers positioned near the border with Ukraine with 60mm mortars, AK-12 rifles, machine guns, sniper rifles, anti-tank guided missiles and anti-tank grenade launchers, as well as night vision equipment, the Yonhap news agency said, citing Ukraine’s intelligence agency.

“This deployment is historic for North Korea, which has previously sent advisory or specialist groups abroad but never a large ground force,” the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a US thinktank, said in an online post.

The North Korean forces in Russia are thought to include about 500 officers and a small number of generals, as well as members of the Storm Corps, elite troops who are better trained – and fed – than most of their comrades, who are poorly equipped and vulnerable to illness and malnutrition.

In 2017, a North Korean soldier who made a frantic escape across the border – barely surviving multiple gunshot wounds from his own side – was found by the South Korean doctors who saved him to have a 27cm intestinal worm and a host of other parasites in his system. His stomach contents reflected a poor diet – cheaper corn instead of rice – and this for a staff sergeant said to be from the relatively elite border guard. South Korean researchers in 2015 cited elevated rates of chronic hepatitis B and C, tuberculosis and parasites among North Korean defectors.

‘Most of them are unlikely to come back home alive’

Provided they survive, the transplanted troops could benefit from their time on the Ukrainian front, according to former North Korean soldiers who say many will see their tour as a source of pride. It will also an opportunity to earn extra money and, perhaps, secure better treatment for their families who, according to South Korean military intelligence, have been moved en masse to unknown locations to keep the deployment secret.

“They are too young and won’t understand exactly what it means,” said Lee Woong-gil, a former member of the Storm Corps who defected to the South in 2007. “They will just consider it an honour to be selected as the ones to go to Russia among the many North Korean soldiers. But I think most of them are unlikely to come back home alive.”

Most of their wages will go directly to the regime – potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign currency that is rumoured to form part of a deal Kim reached with Vladimir Putin this summer. Depending on how long the conflict lasts and the number of North Korean troops involved, their mutual defence agreement could include the transfer of sophisticated Russian weapons technology in return for North Korean ammunition, missiles and personnel.

Reports of dead and wounded soldiers would have little impact on the North Korean army – state media claimed last month that 1.4 million people had applied to join or return to the army in the space of a week. But significant losses would deal a blow to Kim should the news ever get past the country’s tightly controlled propaganda machine.

“Kim Jong-un is taking a big gamble,” said Ahn Chan-il, a former North Korean army first lieutenant who is now head of the World Institute for North Korean Studies, a thinktank in Seoul. “If there are no large casualty numbers, he will get what he wants to some extent. But things will change a lot if many of his soldiers die in battle.”

The coming weeks will tell if the North Korean troops are more than poorly prepared, unwitting mercenaries Kim has offered up to enrich and strengthen his regime.

Choi Jung-hoon, a former first lieutenant in North Korea’s army who now leads an activist group in Seoul, said his “heart ached” when he saw a Ukraine-released video purporting to show young North Korean soldiers lining up to collect their Russian military fatigues and equipment last month.

“None would think they are going to Russia to die,” Choi said. “But I think they’re cannon fodder because they will be sent to the most dangerous sites. I’m sure they will be killed.”

Agencies contributed reporting.

Edinburgh zoo has announced the birth of a pygmy hippo to rival Thailand’s internet hit, Moo Deng.

Khao Kheow open zoo’s Moo Deng went viral on social media earlier this year and fans became obsessed by her personality and charm.

However, now Scotland has its very own new arrival, which was announced on Monday.

The zoo posted to X on 4 November: “Moo Deng? Who deng? Introducing … Haggis.

“Otto and Gloria have welcomed an ADORABLE pygmy hippo calf! She is doing well, but we’ll be keeping the hippo house closed for the time being so that our expert keepers can keep a close eye on mum and baby at this sensitive time.”

Jonny Appleyard, hoofstock team leader at Edinburgh zoo, said: “Haggis is doing really well so far and it is amazing to see her personality beginning to shine already.

“The first 30 days are critical for her development so the pygmy hippo house will be closed for now to allow us to keep a close eye on mum and baby at this sensitive time.

“While Thailand’s Moo Deng has become a viral global icon, it is important to remember that pygmy hippos are incredibly rare.

“It is great to have our own little ambassador right here in Edinburgh to connect with our visitors and help raise awareness of the challenges the species face in the wild.”

The female calf was born on 30 October.

Pygmy hippos are native to forests and swamps in west Africa. It is estimated that only 2,500 are left in the wild due to habitat loss.

To celebrate Haggis’s arrival, Edinburgh zoo is offering people the chance to meet her, and funds raised will go towards animal care.

Edinburgh zoo’s X account playfully apologised for pitting Haggis and Moo Deng against one another later on Monday, posting: “Sorry guys this is our official notes app apology.

“We were wrong to pit Haggis and Moo Deng against each other.

“There is space in this world for two beautiful pygmy hippo divas and we should celebrate them all.

“Sorry to Moo Deng. Let’s work it out on the remix.”

Moo deng literally means “bouncy pork” in Thai and refers to a type of meatball.

The Republican mega-donors Dick and Liz Uihlein, who are the third largest donors in this year’s US presidential election, have sought information about who employees at their company Uline will be voting for in Tuesday’s ballot.

A screenshot seen by the Guardian shows how employees at the private Wisconsin paper and office products distributor were asked to take part in what was called an anonymous survey to track who the employees were voting for on 5 November.

Below a picture of a blue donkey and a red elephant, the online survey says: “We’re curious – how does Uline compare to the current national polls?”

While the button employees are meant to click says the survey is anonymous, the webpage also says that employees “may be asked to sign in”. “This is solely to verify you are a Uline employee and to ensure one submission per person. Your name is not tracked, and your answers remain anonymous.”

Public records show that Dick Uihlein has donated almost $80m to the Restoration Pac in the 2024 cycle, which supports the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, and other Republican candidates.

One employee who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retribution said the request felt like an infringement on their privacy and that people inside the company were angered by it. Another said multiple employees had privately questioned how anonymous the survey really was. There was an assumption that Democrats would not answer the survey truthfully, a source close to Uline told the Guardian.

For Uline workers, there is little doubt about who their bosses want to win in this week’s election.

The billionaire Uihleins are staunchly pro-Trump and anti-abortion and have had significant influence on local and national politics, including changes to state laws that will make it more difficult for states to pass pro-choice legislation or changes to state constitutions in the wake of the Dobbs decision that overruled national abortion protections.

The voter survey is particularly significant because Uline’s operations are headquartered in the critical swing state of Wisconsin, which is one of three so-called “blue wall” states that are seen as necessary for Kamala Harris to win the White House. While Joe Biden won Wisconsin in the 2020 race for the White House, Trump took it in 2016, solidifying its status as a swing state.

Asked whether the request for voting information might be seen as intimidating, Liz Uihlein responded in a statement to the Guardian: “This is stupid! The survey was for fun after enduring two years of this presidential election. The results were anonymous and participation was voluntary. This is completely benign.”

Danielle Lang, senior director of voting rights at the Campaign Legal Center, said she did not believe the request was benign.

“Employers should know to be very careful around pressure on employees, about whether they vote and certainly who they vote for,” Lang said.

“Regardless of intentions, this very clearly could create anxiety for many employees,” she said. “Employees rely on employers for their livelihood.”

Federal and some state laws protect employees from voter intimidation and coercion, including by employers. Under federal law, voters who need help at the voting booth because of a disability may choose so-called “assisters” under the Voting Rights Act. But those assisters may not be employers or union reps, Lang said.

“I think that is an implicit recognition of how much power employers can have over employees and the undue influence they can wield,” Lang said.

In Wisconsin, it is also criminal to solicit a person to show how their vote is cast.

A spokesperson declined to answer the Guardian’s question about the results of the survey, which were due by 25 October.

The government argument that just one-third of farmers will be affected by the new inheritance tax rules is in direct conflict with data produced by the its own environment department, according to the head of the farmer’s union, as the row over inheritance tax for farmers continued.

The announcement in Rachel Reeves’s budget last week of plans to remove the Agricultural Property Relief inheritance tax exemption from farms worth more than £1m has been met with a storm of fury from across the farming industry and suggestions of “militant protest”.

In an emergency meeting with the environment secretary, Steve Reed, on Monday, the NFU’s president, Tom Bradshaw, demanded the new rules be withdrawn and put to consultation with the agricultural industry and Defra experts so that a solution that does not sting family farms can be found.

The original aim of the tax, when brought in, said experts, was to stop wealthy people buying up farmland to avoid inheritance tax. Prominent farming figures James Dyson and Jeremy Clarkson have come out against the tax change. But some experts including tax policy writer Dan Neidle and Paul Johnson from the Institute for Fiscal Studies said it would be a good idea to close the loophole.

However, the Treasury numbers the analysis is based on are being questioned. The chancellor last week claimed that 72% of farms would be unaffected. The NFU argues that cash-poor, medium-sized family farms will be unaffordably hit if the rate remains at £1m, and pointed to Defra figures, which it said indicated that the true percentage of farms affected by the APR changes will be 66%.

The Treasury’s assumption was based on former claims for APR but many assets on farmland were claimed for under a separate inheritance tax relief scheme – BPR, according to the union, and the new regime joins these schemes together. The NFU said that the Treasury has therefore undervalued many of the UK’s farms and the Defra data is more accurate. This data was worked out recently when farms were applying for subsidy after the UK left the EU farm payments system and they had to register their value and size with Defra.

Bradshaw said the Treasury and Defra agreed in the meeting to go away and come up with the “true figure”.

Bradshaw said farmers were furious after Reed promised before the budget that there would be no changes to APR, so businesses were unable to prepare for the shock.

He told journalists on Monday: “They do not understand the immediate impacts this having to intergenerational farms. Some very, very concerned successful businesses have a parent involved who is in their 80s but the person running the farm is in their 50s. The assets are still in the ownership of the older family member. We have seen some in ill health who will not live seven years to utilise the gifting rules. It is unbelievable the pressure they are putting on the industry. To make this change now, to rip the rug out from under the farming industry, I don’t see how they can justify it.”

The NFU usually advises its members not to protest but Bradshaw warned that “militant” action may be taken over this.

“The outrage from rural communities is like nothing we have ever seen before. They are talking about militant action. We’ve always said, don’t protest, but we can’t say to people don’t do that now. We will be doing our mass lobby for people who have a meeting with a constituency MP but I know others are doing other things,” he said, adding that 190,000 people have signed a petition against the changes.

The NFU policy chief, Nick von Westenholz, explained: “In a very best-case scenario with spouses using all of their allowances it’s true they can claim up to £3m but in most instances that will not be the case. Not all farm business owners are married. One of the spouses could have other assets which use up the £1m threshold. So it is not a reasonable figure to say that it will be available for most farms. Good policy should be based on the reasonable worst case scenarios rather than best case scenario”.

A government spokesperson said: “We understand concerns about changes to Agricultural Property Relief and the Defra secretary of state and exchequer secretary to the Treasury met with NFU president Tom Bradshaw today. Ministers made clear that the vast majority of those claiming relief will not be affected by these changes. They will be able to pass the family farm down to their children just as previous generations have always done.

“This is a fair and balanced approach that protects the family farm while also fixing the public services that we all rely on. We remain committed to working with the NFU and listening to farmers.”