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…

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…

BBS second visit

I’m really quite fond of my Breeding Bird Survey square (I have two but there is one that I think of as ‘mine’ more than the other). It really doesn’t photograph that well – being a bog-standard bit of arable farmland – but still, I am fond of it. On Sunday morning I made my…

Open Farm Sunday

I did a turn for my favourite local farmer yesterday on Open Farm Sunday. Duncan Farrington, of the delicious Mellow Yellow rapeseed oil (and the even more delicious Mellow Yellow garlic mayonnaise) had an event just down the road.  I spent the day, in the sunshine, talking to people about birds, as I have done…