24/08/2024 Farming Today This Week: Border controls, coastal communities, bracken, curlews, On Your Farm at 60

Farming Today

Businesses that import meat could have to pay up to six times more than they were expecting to get each lorry through border checks; that’s according to the British Meat Processors Association. Since April businesses that import through Dover and the Eurotunnel through Folkestone have been paying what’s called a Common User Charge.

Bracken is a large and very prolific fern, and it can be a big problem for farmers, particularly in the uplands. It eats into grazing land, it harbours ticks and it’s difficult to control, especially since last autumn when Asulox, the only herbicide used to kill it, became permanently withdrawn from the UK and Europe. The Innovative Farmers Network has just started trialling non-chemical approaches to bracken control, one of which involves using cattle to trample it.

Curlew are an iconic and beautiful bird of moorland and wetland areas, but curlew numbers have diminished significantly over the last few decades, placing them firmly on the RSPB’s red list. A project in Wales, funded by the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, is using drones to locate nests which can then be protected.

All week on Farming Today we've been visiting rural communities all around the UK's coastline and finding out how they're meeting the challenges they face. Sarah Swadling has been to the Devon village of Beer to find out how they're keeping the community and tourism vibrant.

60 years ago, the first ever BBC Radio 4's On Your Farm programme aired, as an early morning outside broadcast from a family farm in Rutland. To mark the programme’s diamond anniversary, Vernon Harwood has visited that same farm to discover what’s changed over the past six decades.

Presented by Caz Graham and produced by Beatrice Fenton.