Following this post about neonics and sugar beet from mid December, permission has been granted by the UK government for use of neonicotinoid pesticides on sugar beet in 2021. Today’s blog by pesticide expert Prof Dave Goulson is well worth a read on the Wildlife and Countryside Link blog.
Category: FARMING
Sunday book review – Wild Farming by Robin Page
It would be fair to ask what this book is about: and that is a question to which there is no easy answer. The first part of the answer is that it is not the book pictured above envisaged by booksellers (eg see here, here, here), and indeed Quiller (the intended publisher) who claimed Wild…
The new Dom (not Cummings)?
Dominic Dyer stepped down from his part-time role as boss of the Badger Trust a few weeks ago and the Daily Fail may have the reason why – click here. An anonymous prominent farmer is reported as saying his only qualification is that he is a friend of Carrie Symonds. That was brave of the…
In court, virtually
Friday found me watching a computer screen from 10:30am to 4:30pm to watch the Wild Justice challenge to the lawfulness of Natural Resources Wales’s general licences. In theory this was in court in Cardiff but I am not sure that anyone was in Cardiff. There were many attendees from ourselves (the Claimant), NRW (the Defendant)…
Today…
Today the Wild Justice challenge of the Welsh general licences is held online in front of His Honour Judge Jarman QC. The great advantages of online attendance of court is that one can shout at the screen, the seats are more comfortable and one can munch biscuits all the time.
Never, ever, trust the NFU
I think it is over 20 years since I stopped trusting the NFU at all. I have quite liked some of the leading NFU characters over that time but I haven’t respected the organisation and its grip on the truth in that time. On Friday George Monbiot exposed an example that shows you the type…
The Favourite River Lugg
The River Lugg has been in the news a lot recently due to the management of the river and of some of the surrounding farmland by a local farmer (see here, here and here). More recently the farmer’s account of events has emerged (click here, here) and we’ll have to wait and see how this…
The sweet taste of success?
The Pink-footed Goose is a somewhat unheralded success story in the UK, with a ten-fold increase in numbers over the past 70 years. And that is of some global significance since around 85% of the world population winters in the UK. Our Pinkfeet are from the Iceland and Greenland breeding populations whereas there are Pinkfeet…
Farming is changing – but we can’t really tell you how.
Nobody really has a clue what’s happening to farming over the next few years, and that obviously includes DEFRA. This document, according to ministers, represents the most fundamental shift in farming policy for over 50 years (but the details are so unclear it would be difficult to write them on the side of a barn,…
Farming Today, today
Three weeks ago Miles King had a Guest Blog here to shine a light on the outrageous planting of trees on a peat bog at Berrier in Cumbria and today Farming Today had a good piece (first 6mins of programme) on that case and the wider issue that it (and Miles) raised, about how careful…