Farming Today

UK potato growers could be facing losses of almost £170 million because of this summer’s heatwaves and drought. That’s according to new analysis from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, a not-for-profit organisation which looks at the impacts of climate change. Add that to crop losses across Europe’s main potato growing countries - Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands - and we could...

More beans please - should the UK be growing more pulses? The Food Foundation looked into the potential for these crops and concluded that the UK could and should be growing more of them. Farmers may have to prepare for disappointment as England's biggest environmental scheme re-opens for applications this week. This is the Sustainable Farming Incentive, the SFI, which pays farmers for environment...

This week, we've been taking a closer look at agricultural co-ops, from very small-scale cooperative working up to huge dairy co-ops. Across Europe, it’s widely recognised that farmer collaboration can give agriculture a stronger voice in the food supply chain.   We look at how they are working in different parts of the UK and ask if there is scope for more co-operative working. The BBC's Central...

Party conference season is underway and so we'll be catching up with the rural and farming policies of the main parties around the UK over the next few weeks. The Liberal Democrats open their meeting in Brighton tomorrow. They're renewing their call for the government to protect food security by funding more on-farm reservoirs, so farmers can cope with increasingly frequent drought and deluge. The...

There have been violent clashes during big farmer protests in Romania. Thousands of shepherds have been demonstrating in the capital Bucharest about an extension to a ban on the export of live sheep. We speak to the BBC's Central Europe correspondent to find out why. The battle to find the best sheepdog handler in Britain and Ireland has been won by a Welsh hill farmer for the second year. After a...

Farmers have been assessing the damage done by the summer's severe drought, but it's not just low crop yields they've had to face. Woodlands have also suffered, especially younger trees which haven't had time to get fully established, which can take up to five years. In 2024-25 just over 10 million individual trees were planted in England. How many of those have died? And what can farmers do if th...

The former Labour Home Secretary David Blunkett has told the government to 'reset' it's rural policy, and 'learn from its mistakes' with inheritance tax. Speaking at an event launching the Countryside Alliance's 'Campaign for The Countryside', he said the government should also “set aside pro­pos­als to ban trail hunt­ing” and he warned that “for our coun­tryside to be sus­tain­able, it requires a...

We hear calls for more ‘cooperative working’, to give farmers a louder voice in the food supply chain. When is a Hereford cow not a Hereford cow? How a dispute about breed purity has ended up in the High Court. And cultivating hemp and flax for building materials is now the focus of a trial project on a number of farms in Dorset. Presented by Caz Graham and produced by Beatrice Fenton.

The number of bluetongue cases since the first of July in the UK has now topped a thousand. That’s nearly three times the number of positive cases for the whole of the previous year to that date. How are farmers feeling about the UK’s largest ever outbreak of this livestock disease? There have been fears that livestock movement restrictions imposed to try to halt the spread of the outbreak could d...

The number of bluetongue cases since the first of July in the UK has now topped a thousand. That’s nearly three times the number of positive cases for the whole of the previous year to that date. How are farmers feeling about the UK’s largest-ever outbreak of this livestock disease? There have been fears that livestock movement restrictions imposed to try to halt the spread of the outbreak could d...

UK dairy cows produce around 15 billion litres of milk every year and each litre comes with an environmental cost: methane and greenhouse gas emissions; energy and water use; and potential pollution. Scotland’s Rural College, SRUC, has completed a study looking at what the dairy sector needs to do to improve sustainbility and reduce its impact on the environment, while staying resilient and profit...

Britain is producing less food now than 30 years ago, with lower levels of self sufficiency in 10 out of 11 key food stuffs grown by UK farmers. That’s according to a new report from the National Farmers Union which argues that food production been overlooked as a national priority by successive governments. The UK's biomethane network says producing green energy could offer an "incredible opportu...

A Westminster think tank has warned that internet-connected technology has the potential to be used by China to spy on the UK food system. The Coalition on Secure Technology describes itself as a cross-party group of policymakers and experts. It says that components which allow devices like tractors and crop monitoring drones to connect to mobile networks could present a security risk, with the ma...

Every year, huge numbers of pheasant and partridge are raised across the UK for shoots, with around 40 million released into the countryside. Now the Government is launching a call for evidence to understand the welfare and environmental impact of the birds, which are kept in enclosures before their release. As farmers decide how they're going to manage next year's crops, the cost of fertiliser an...

As the UK experiences its worst ever outbreak of the livestock disease bluetongue, we find out how government vets and scientists are coping as they deal with thousands of cases. The trade union which represents them says morale is low and the workload is mountainous. They say more long term strategic planning is needed and better pay to address staff shortages. How well prepared are we for a majo...

How well prepared are we for a major threat to our food security? Not quite well enough, according to the National Audit Office, which is publishing a report later today on resilience in England’s food supply chain. Why strawberry growers have found their plants are still producing healthy, even bumper crops much later than usual. There are only around eleven hundred calling male corncrakes in the...

As the UK experiences its worst ever outbreak of the livestock disease bluetongue, we find out how government vets and scientists are coping as they deal with thousands of cases. The trade union which represents them says morale is low and the workload is mountainous. They say more long term strategic planning is needed and better pay to address staff shortages. Scientists in Northern Ireland are...

The many pressures on land use are coming into sharper focus in Scotland where opposition is growing to a series of large AI data centres planned across the central belt, between Glasgow and Edinburgh. The ruling Scottish National Party’s national council is calling for a moratorium on building them. Most of the centres are to be built on open countryside, and farmers are among the people who have...

How practical would it be to grow our food underground? It’s a question being investigated by researchers at the University of Shefffield who are growing crops more than a kilometre below ground-level in a working mine near Whitby. The Environment Agency has produced its first ever annual report into agriculture and water in England. Taking data from the last five years, it assesses the impact of...

Calls for wider bans on fishing with heavy gear that drags along the seabed to protect dolphins and porpoises. We visit Hugh Lowe Farms in Kent, who have been providing strawberries to Wimbledon for over 25 years. Presented by Caz Graham and produced by Beatrice Fenton.

How practical would it be to grow our food underground? It’s a question being investigated by researchers at the University of Shefffield who are growing crops more than a kilometre below ground-level in a working mine near Whitby. They’re collaborating with Farm Urban, a company that specialises in vertical farming, but usually going up vertically rather than down; and they reckon this is the wor...

The Environment Agency has produced its first ever annual report into agriculture and water in England. It takes data from the last five years, to assess the impact of agricultural pollution from farms, and how water availability is being managed. Over the last five years there've been 19,018 inspections and 49 serious category one pollution incidents caused by farming. Non-Compliance with water r...

It seems we might have started a particular conversation about the very dry harvest in parts of the country. We spoke to a farmer, whose feed barley was a third drier than it should be. As a result, his crop was going to weigh less which means he'd get less money for it. Now he is considering adding moisture to the grain, after it leaves storage. We ask an arable expert whether that's something we...

Farmers who graze their livestock on what’s called Common Land in England were being excluded from the government’s new farming environmental support schemes - not because they didn't qualify, but because the Rural Payments Agency's computer system wasn’t up to the job of processing their applications. However, campaigners say that the system's being changed and commoners will now be able to apply...

Ten years of the regenerative farming festival Groundswell - we talk to farmers who were at the first event about how it's changed the way the farm. Chris van Tulleken says farmers and doctors want the same thing, for people to want to buy more real, unprocessed food. What will the Government's new 25 year Farming Roadmap mean for farmers? We ask the Secretary of State. Presented by Anna Hill and...