Guest blog – Food security by Roderick Leslie

Although I worked as a forester I actually studied Agricultural & Forest Science under the great agricultural educationalist Mike Soper. Even back in the 70s I remember the question ‘where does it all end?’ was being asked – the risks of flash-over resistance to antibiotics from pigs to humans as a result of them being…

Hope continues to rise

Every picture tells a story – and this one tells a big story. This graph shows the farmland bird index at the RSPB’s Hope Farm and in England as a whole. It shows a slow, steady decline in England altogether (blue line)  but a massive overall rise (red line) at Hope Farm. Read more about…

Glad we’ve cleared that up

From Guy Smith’s Twitter feed (@essexpeasant): @bbcfarmingtoday please note that reports I mentioned on your prog of 70% of the Swedish OSR crop being destroyed by flea beetle were wrong and Now seen transcript and fully admit what I said was wrong. Apologies. Will not be repeating it again. Well done to Guy, NFU Vice-President,…

Let’s be reasonable.

I don’t know how often readers of this blog go back a few days and read the comments that continue to accrue on earlier posts.  And I don’t know whether I would recommend it either – sometimes a late post is the best of the lot, but not always. So, I have little idea how…

Butterflies are so easy

On Saturday I had another visit to Duncan Farrington’s excellent farm. I was on the look-out for Turtle Doves as they used to be here but I haven’t seen, or heard, one for years in this spot.  Duncan’s farm looks good for Turtle Doves to me – plenty of thick nesting cover on the old…