Farming Today

07/09/24 Farming Today This Week: bluetongue vaccine, seabed recovery, £100m cuts to the farming budget?

The Government plans to cut the budget for nature friendly farming in England by £100m, according to a report in the Guardian. It claims that civil service sources say the cut is needed to help fill a £22 billion treasury shortfall. The reduced spending could affect the new Sustainable Farming Incentive which replaces the old EU system, paying farmers for environmental benefits produced on their land. Nature and farming groups have reacted with consternation. We ask how significant would a cut of £100m be.

All this week we are looking at how land use is changing, as public and private investment is brought in to fund environmental schemes. With increasing green finance opportunities, more and more companies are stepping in to broker deals between farmers and investors. Natergall's business model is to deliver ecological restoration on its own land and that of others, and to commercialise the results.

Rural areas across England are in danger of becoming 'pharmacy deserts', as medicine providers across the country continue to consolidate and close smaller branches. That's according to the National Pharmacy Association, which has published a study showing that over the last two years, nearly nine in ten council areas in England have lost pharmacies. It found that rural areas often rely on fewer providers, so are harder hit by closures.

A new report has revealed that part of the seabed off Devon which had been trashed by years of trawling and dredging is being revitalised. Research by the University of Plymouth shows that within just 10 years the former shellfish reef has been transformed.

Presented by Charlotte Smith and produced by Beatrice Fenton.

Duration:: 27m
Broadcast on:: 07 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

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Experience the convenience of shopping Blue Nile, the original online jeweler since 1999 at bluenile.com. Bluenile.com. BBC sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Good morning. This week, a blue tongue vaccine, a seabed recovery, and our 100 million pounds worth of cuts coming to the farming budget. I think Defra is going to be subject to exactly the same pressures as the other government departments. One of the challenges for Defra is that it's not central to the government mission boards. More on that later. First, green finance. Now, if you've been up early and caught our sister program Farming Today, which is on at 545 every weekday morning here on BBC Radio 4, you'll know that we've been looking at this all week. It's basically defined as getting money to pay for things, which improve nature or reduce harmful emissions, and so it offers opportunities for farmers. There are, though, increasing green finance opportunities, and it can all be a bit bewildering. So, more and more companies are stepping in to broker deals between farmers and investors. Natagal's business model is to deliver ecological restoration on its own land and that of others and then commercialise the results. Bob Walker visited their first site, Boothby Wildland in Lincolnshire, a 617 hectare arable farm. The company bought it in December 2021 and has since been gradually removing fields from intensive cereal production. He met with head of natural capital, Ivan de Clay. So, I'm standing next to a blackthorn sapling that has popped up in the last three years since we stopped farming this section of the farm. And that has a scrub-land value. We will calculate how many units we are generating here, and we will hope to sell those to developers who are looking to comply with the biodiversity net gain legislation to go ahead with their developments. This soil is in really bad nick. It's been plowed for many decades. It's lost its biological functions. One of the things we're hoping to do is recover those soils through natural processes, and in that process we will be sequestering carbon in those soils. And that is another ecosystem service we hope to sell, and that will take the form of a carbon credit. Would you ever turn down an investor, something like an oil company? Absolutely, we would, yeah. We are not trying to enable business as usual. The only people we want to sell carbon to are those companies or organisations who have already committed to dropping their emissions massively. We want them to aim for net zero by 2050, for example. We will help them mitigate for the bits that they can't do in that time period. My name is Ben Hart. I'm the head of operations at Natagal. My job is to run the sites that we have, as well as the community engagement programs as well. This won't be a way for companies to greenwash. If an organisation has the appropriate trajectory and it is aligned with the science, then we will work with them, but up to that point we are very clear that we are not going to enable greenwashing. As we've been walking around here, we have seen in the distance a combine operating, so it's still a working form. We have staggered our transition from arable farming into free roaming grazing. We staggered over a period of three harvests and did so that we would have a variety of different vegetation successional stages. This is our last harvest. This is the final time the combine will be out on this relatively poor quality arable land over, I don't know, for at least 100 years, who knows. But it's a momentous moment because as of today we will be transitioning into a completely wildlife biodiversity driven system. One of the criticisms of operations like this is that it is changing local communities, the way communities have existed and operated for centuries. When we took over the site there was one person employed, we now employ three local people and we've worked really hard to engage with all the different stakeholders and that is the local landowners and the local farmers. It's also the local communities. A lot of the community who live around here, the main engagement they have with the land is walking their dogs on the farm. As part of that engagement we're looking at adding an extra two and a half kilometres of accessible pass. At the landscapes like these are always changing. You mentioned the farming culture here would have been the same for centuries, that's just simply not the case. A hundred years ago this was a pasture farm, 99 fields and now it's an arable farm made up of 30 fields. The farmhouse here was built less than 15 years ago. So it's not a family who's been here for a hundred years. It's a family who was here for 15 years and worked for a farming business up the road. We all know the problems of rural depopulation. We want to repopulate the countryside, we want to bring the volunteers here, we want to work with our neighbours, we want to employ local people. Nevertheless all that said the big criticism of rewilding is you are taking land out of food production and that's what's happened here. Yes, whilst that is happening we also need to recognise that we are on a biodiversity apocalypse to put it mildly. We're not proposing all land like this as rewilded. We acknowledge that we're taking land out of production here, but we think this land is the right land to do that on. And this biodiverse region will support food production in the wider landscape, whether that's through pollination services or restored soils. I've been to clay there with Bob Walker. More on green finance on BBC Sands just search for farming today. Rural areas across England are in danger of becoming pharmacy deserts. As medicine providers across the country continue to consolidate and close smaller branches. Well that's according to a study published this week by the National Pharmacy Association or NPA, which shows that over the last two years nearly nine in ten council areas in England have lost pharmacies. It found that rural areas often rely on fewer providers, so are harder hit by closures. Anna Hill spoke to Nick Kay, who runs several pharmacies in Cornwall where he represents community pharmacies. He's also chair of the NPA. Over the past couple of years we've had 1,500 pharmacies closed and unfortunately most of those closures have been in rural areas. Probably because 90% of income of those pharmacies in those particular areas comes from NHS services. You won't see lots of health and beauty counters and things like that. So when community pharmacy funding is primarily from the NHS and the NHS funding has been completely flat for the last five years. That's obviously going to cause a huge amount of financial pressure. You are demanding more government funding but pharmacies generally are making enough money to cover their less profitable outlets aren't they? I mean I'll just quote you some figures that came out just this week. Day Lewis, which is a large pharmacist operating across England, it's just reported sales topping half a billion pounds. Although profits are down from last year but surely those big pharmacies can't afford to fund their rural branches. Those particular results are not necessarily indicative of the entire sector and even if you've got large pharmacies or small pharmacies all of them have been at risk. So you most of your listeners will have understood that Lloyd's pharmacies now doesn't exist. That was the second largest pharmacy chain in the country of over a thousand branches and now that is no longer in existence. You actually work in pharmacy yourself. Why do you need more government funding? What's happened to make you need more money? Yeah so I am the CEO of Community Pharmacy Cornwall as well as working in pharmacies in Cornwall. And actually what's happened with it is that community pharmacy funding has been completely flat over the last five years. That's meant that people have had to sort of reduce and cut hours of service. So there used to be a thing where some pharmacies had to be contractually open for a hundred hours which meant they would be open at times which were maybe more convenient weekends and evenings. And now the government have said that they don't have to open for a hundred hours anymore. They only have to open for 72 hours and in fact businesses large and small have reduced their opening hours. And I see that on my patch especially in the far west of Cornwall, that really rural area where pharmacies are having to cut their opening hours and almost you can get a desert of pharmacy provision sort of late on a Sunday afternoon. And listeners will understand those rural areas. Things may not be very far on a map but with things with public transport in those rural areas actually accessing that healthcare can be really problematic Anna. Shouldn't pharmacies be investing in different approaches perhaps like automated dispensing and collection kiosks? I know they exist in some areas wouldn't that help? Automation is and collection chaos is an increase in technology is something that most pharmacies would want to embrace. The problem with it is if you've had flat funding the ability to actually invest in those things is then reduced. And it's one of the hardest parts of my job as chair of the National Pharmacy Association is people ring me up and say this is a third generation business. I've re-mortgaged my house. I haven't told my partner when's it going to get better because these people really want to serve the communities that they're embedded in. There is no lack of desire to invest in those things but in crew terms the cash just isn't there in most businesses Anna. And what is the effect then on rural communities people who need their medicine? The effect is actually people potentially not being able to access medicine at the time they wanted maybe the pharmacies closed and the other things as well is if pharmacies aren't there to deal with some of those minor things then people end up driving to hospitals, A&E's and all those other things where pharmacies could help. Nick K from the National Pharmacy Association. A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson told us pharmacies are key to our plans to make healthcare fit for the future as we shift the focus of the NHS out of hospitals and into the community. We will make better use of pharmacist skills including rolling out independent prescribing to improve access to care. Now some welcome good news this week in the recovery of a seabed. Research from the University of Plymouth showed that the bed off Devon which had been damaged by years of trawling and dredging has been transformed in just 10 years. And as Andrea Ormsby from BBC Spotlight reports it's all because of muscle power. Farming underwater in clear blue sea line after line of rope falls vertically from the surface to the seabed each one teaming with muscles and zigzagging their way through like slalom skiers hundreds of fish. This is line bay off the south Devon coast home to the UK's largest offshore muscle farm. It's a business and a research project. My name is John home yard I'm the managing director of offshore shellfish. The business is farming muscles on ropes and it's a unique opportunity because no one's built a farm of this scale in that sort of location before anywhere. And so we were very keen to see what the effect of the farm would be. So before we actually started the whole place was surveyed by Plymouth University and then we've continued that survey every year since. One of the scientists involved in this research right from the start is Dr Emma Sheehan an associate professor in marine conservation with the University of Plymouth. Well after years of dredging and trawling the seabed we found there is just lots of silty muddy sediments lots of scavenging species but very functionally benign you know that that's all we saw there. We were really surprised to see how quickly we were seeing positive changes associated with the farm. Straight away we were seeing muscle clumps that fallen from the ropes and started to create these reefs that we're now seeing. Straight away you're starting seeing cuttlefish maybe using them to lay eggs and you know it's really really quick but now we know we've been doing this for 10 years and we've seen a third increase in fish whether they're in the water column around the ropes are on the seabed. We've seen 50% increases in the diversity of animals that live within the sediments and they're oxygenating the sediments and so just everything we look at is just positive increases. The company behind this farm harvests around 3,000 tons of muscles a year most of them exported to Holland and from there onto Belgium and northern France. The production of muscles in Europe has actually decreased by about 100,000 tons in the last 20 years mostly because of poor water quality and a lot of other issues. Lack of space is one of them. So the fact that we can we figure out a way of growing them offshore in exposed waters opens up a tremendous opportunity. I think the key thing we're showing is that shellfish farming or aquaculture of the type that we do can coexist with fishing and biodiversity and it's pretty much a win win win situation for all of us. And the years of research back that up a new report released by the University of Plymouth has revealed that muscle power is revitalising and restoring centuries old shellfish reefs. Are we so excited? You know, we love it when you find like a human activity that's actually having a positive effect and so not only is this creating sustainable form of protein production but then to also have these added benefits of restoring our broken seabed habitats. It's just it's a really exciting thing to find. The team here is now being contacted by people from across the world keen to try to replicate this success story. That report from Andrea Ormsby. Now we've been reporting over the past few weeks on increasing numbers of cases of blue tongue. Now the government has agreed to the emergency use of three vaccines within the UK to try and stop it spreading. Blue tongue is a virus carried by biting midges blown into the UK from Northern Europe. It's currently widespread particularly in the Netherlands. It can infect sheep, cattle, goats, deer and camelids but not humans nor does it pose any risk to the food chain. It is however unpleasant for animals that contract it and it can be lethal. Temporary control zones which restrict the movement of livestock have been established in the areas where it's been confirmed. Nick Whitehead keeps sheep within the zone in Suffolk. He says it's having an impact on his business. So I would sell to cultures to market which is outside the restricted zone that I know of at the moment. So can't do that, everything has to stay on site. We don't know till when. You really have no control where the midges will fly. Just a big worry. Nothing we really can do. Well the approval of these new vaccines comes just after the confirmation of a new case of blue tongue in an area that's previously been unaffected. The east riding of Yorkshire just north of the Humber estuary. That takes the total number of infected premises up to 21. Christine Middlemuss is the UK's chief vet. Kaz Graham asked her about the likely source of infection for this new case in Yorkshire. It looks very much likely that it is midges blown over from the Netherlands that have created this case. We do think in a premise in Suffolk one of the first premises where we've sampled all the animals. There has been some local spread. So the risk now is about our own midges picking it up. And do our local midges get it by biting infected livestock? Because I mean the virus itself isn't contagious. It's not spread from cow to cow or sheep to sheep. It's just spread by midges isn't it? Yep, you're absolutely right. So infected midges blew over from the continent. They bit an animal here and then it takes only one bite to create an infection. That animal becomes infected and then our local UK midges bite that infected animal. They fly to another animal in the herd or maybe one next door for their next meal when they bite they create infection in that animal. So it is midges spread but the point of the movement restrictions is to stop long distance movement of infected animals because they could take the virus to midges in a clean area. Tell me about the vaccines that Defra has permitted the use of and also why have they only been approved for use now when the virus has been in the UK for more than ten days at least? Okay, so these vaccines are very newly developed and they have not gone through the full safety and efficacy testing process. The veterinary medicines directorate have looked at them and they believe they don't have any deleterious effects. Given the situation where in the sexiest state has decided to permit their use without them being authorized. We now have to create a license for them to be used for blue tongue under the blue tongue regulations and we will targeting their use in the restricted area in the first instance. So how long will it take to get that license up and running? A few days and two weeks it's important to recognize for the vaccine it is not fully protective so it will not stop your animal becoming infected and it will not stop it being infectious to midges but the evidence from the continent is that it is suppressing the virus so they're not having as many clinical signs and they're not having as many deaths. Okay and are you able to estimate how severe this year's spread of the virus is going to be going on the evidence that you have now? Well it is a moving picture so anything says is only an estimate and you know midges are weather dependent so it really really depends on what happens to the weather particularly temperatures over the coming weeks. But what we would expect is some ongoing local spread in the restricted area and potentially a bit beyond the restricted area we are doing surveillance testing to test, look along the boundaries of the restricted area and try and be head of where actual clinical infection is happening. Christine Middlemes the UK's chief vet. The government plans to cut the budget for nature friendly farming in England by £100 million well that's according to a report in The Guardian this week. It claims that civil service sources say the cut is needed to help fill a £22 billion treasury shortfall. Well the reduced spending is reported to be from the new sustainable farming incentive the SFI which replaces the old EU system. It pays farmers for environmental benefits produced on their land. Nature and farming groups have reacted with consternation. Well we contacted the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs and the Treasury neither would confirm nor deny that the budget would be cut. £100 million is the same amount that the previous government had been accused of under spending on environmental programs from the Deafra budget which totals £2.4 billion for England. Well the issue was raised in the House of Commons this week by the Liberal Democrat environment spokesperson Tim Farron in questions to the Chancellor. Investment in our rural economy must focus heavily on rewarding our farmers for the food they produce and for the environment that they protect. The last government ring fenced £2.4 billion a year for England to support our farming sector. Through indifference or incompetence they underspent by a hundred million last year and betrayed our farmers in doing so. Will she confirm to me to my farmers and to this House that she will not bake in that underspend that was the fault of the last conserved government and will commit to at least ring fencing what is already invested in farming. Well this is Rachel Reeves' reply. The rural economy plays an incredibly important role in our economic prosperity as a country and boosting food security and biodiversity is obviously incredibly important to a whole range of this government's objectives. I will ensure that the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is loud and clear the message from the Right Honourable Member and will ensure that he will include that as part of his submission to the spending review on the 30th of October. So how significant would a cut of £100 million be to the Deafra budget? Sue Pritchard is Chief Executive of the Food Farming and Countryside Commission. She told Anna it would have considerable impact. It is a substantial sum of money when we understand how big our ask is of farmers and the food system to provide for some of the most crucial elements of our economy. Food is foundational to our economy. Farming is foundational to the food system and so it is a big sum of money when we put it in the context of exactly what we're asking from farmers and the food system. Is it actually possible though that if the government does decide to cut the budget by this £100 million, it might actually be a cut even bigger than that? Well, that's right. We have heard signals from the Chancellor, from the Prime Minister about the economic challenges that they're dealing with and I think it probably would have been naive of us not to recognise that we as a sector were going to be asked to lean into that challenge. Do we know why there was an underspend? Farmers have not been clear and confident about the direction of travel for English farming. Take-up has been slow. The options available have been piecemeal. It's been pretty complicated even for those really, really committed farmers who are focused on maximizing payments to understand how they can weave those payments together to support the kind of farming that they want to do. But I think Defra has been working really hard with farmers to understand how to improve take-up and they were certainly on an upward trajectory. Some people might argue that if farmers didn't apply for some of these environmental schemes and that's why the underspend happened, then maybe the budget shouldn't be increased. I think this is more about farmers having confidence in the direction of travel for UK agriculture and recognising perhaps that a big transition like the one that we've been through that we're still going through actually takes time to bed down. Farmers, thankfully, are generally quite cautious and patient people in how they change their businesses. They need several things to all come together. They need a clear version of the future that UK government is really standing behind. And that's not just a Defra strategy, it's a trade strategy, it's a business strategy, it's a land use strategy, it's a health strategy too, the role of farmers and food producers in improving the health of the UK. And then for Treasury to really get behind the task of understanding where is all the money in the system. This isn't just about public money, it's about how supply chains currently support the transition that we know that farmers need to make. There were many, many calls on Defra from various parts of farming asking for that budget, the Defra budget to be increased, not decreased. What do you think is going to happen on October the 30th? Well I think Defra is going to be subject to exactly the same pressures as the other government departments. One of the challenges for Defra is that it's not central at the moment to the government mission boards. I think Defra really needs to work hard to make the case for how in lots of ways it is central to the delivery of the other government missions. But I think the opportunity remains for Defra working with Treasury to get a really clear sense of what is the strategic plan for agriculture? What is the resource that's needed and where does that resource have to come from? Is it just the public purse or are there other actors in the system who can play their part in resourcing that transition? Super Richard from the Food Farming and Countryside Commission talking to Anna Hill. That's it from us, I'm Charlotte Smith, the producer was Beatrice Fenton and farming today is a BBC audio Bristol production. Good taste is easy to spot but hard to pin down. You know it when you see it and in today's culture there's no greater signifier of taste than the car you drive. You want something sophisticated but not stodgy. During yet classic, approachable but with an air of opulence. 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