17/04/24 - Wet weather food impacts, farm microbrewery, tenant farmers and seabird dawn chorus

Farming Today

Content provided by BBC and BBC Radio 4. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by BBC and BBC Radio 4 or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.

14d ago 13:47

MP3•Episode home

A total wipe-out of crops is now a possibility for some farms - it follows the record rainfall over recent months. Crops on thousands of acres of highly productive land have been destroyed and even now fields are too boggy for machinery to harvest or plant crops for the months ahead. So what impact will this have on our fresh produce supply chains?

Tenant farmers "can't be left to go by the wayside" - that's the message from the NFU Tenant Farmer Conference. English farmers who rent some - or all - of the land they work face many challenges at the moment. From landlords taking land back for solar farms or the ELMs environmental schemes, to rising rents and the phasing out of subsidy payments under the basic payments scheme or BPS.

And we visit a former dairy farm where cattle barns have been turned into a microbrewery, a taproom and a wedding venue.

Presented by Charlotte Smith Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Heather Simons

910 episodes

#Business #Agriculture #Science #BBC #BBC Radio 4 #Charlotte Smith #Industries