With towns in the south and southwest flooded out, the government has offered £5,000 payments to help homeowners add flood protection to their homes, while small firms will enjoy a cut of a £10m fund to…
What lies beneath this watery landscape?
Steve Parsons/PA
I’ve been talking to farmers all this week, many of whom have had their fields underwater for a month or more. It is quite soul destroying to see the natural assets of your business, on which you depend…
Once again, genetically modified crops are in the news for all the wrong reasons. In Western Australia’s Supreme Court, organic farmer Steve Marsh is suing his neighbour and fellow farmer Michael Baxter…
Often called “Australia’s most valuable farm”, Cubbie Station in southwest Queensland is now majority foreign-owned.
AAP/Cubbie Group
When most Australians think about farmers, one image still springs to mind: a family in Akubras and Blundstones, battling the elements with a Blue Heeler by their side. That’s still the image invoked by…
Perhaps I was naive, but when I discovered the extent of the chemical soup applied to typical fields I was astonished. As part of our ongoing investigations into the impact of pesticides on bees, we looked…
Keep looking - there’s a new way of farming in there somewhere.
Geoff Caddick/PA
Current farming methods rely too much on expensive chemicals such as fertiliser and pesticides; agroecology combines the best of ecological science and farmers’ knowledge to develop more sustainable food…
Insect predators such as this ladybird can control pests just as well as pesticides.
Nancy Schellhorn
More than A$17 billion worth of crops grown in Australia annually is attributed to agricultural pesticides. That’s a staggering 68% of the A$26 billion industry, according to a recent Deloitte report commissioned…
Profits drive the industry, not sustainability.
naturalengland
The arguments for increasing food demand are well publicised and well understood. By the middle of this century, the planet’s population will top nine billion, presenting a third more mouths to feed. Much…
Has Charles good points to make about the countryside, or is he just stirring it up?
Ben Birchall/PA
In this week’s Country Life HRH Prince of Wales writes of the social and economic importance of farming. It is, he says: the bedrock of our rural communities, making post offices, pubs, public transport…
The battle for Warrnambool Cheese and Butter is a vote of confidence in the Australian dairy industry.
Johnsyweb/Flickr
The share price of Victorian dairy processor Warrnambool Cheese and Butter (WCB) has more than doubled over recent weeks in response to a takeover tussle between Australian publicly listed company Bega…
When disturbed, badgers’ social groups scatter and spread TB more widely.
Ben Birchall/PA
Badgers in the UK are an important wildlife reservoir for bovine tuberculosis, a disease that leads to the slaughter of thousands of cattle each year at a significant cost to the tax payer. But the badger…
Women comprise 43% of the agricultural labour force in developing countries.
CGIAR Climate
Our modern food system is a double-edged sword: delivering chronic under-nutrition due to shortages of nutritious food, and chronic obesity due to overconsumption. In Australia, we’re living among 60…
Seamus Heaney up close with the local environment.
Burns Library, Boston College
The sudden death on Friday of the Irish Nobel prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney has focused international minds and media on the power of poetry to affect our lives. This is especially true from an environmental…
The precise locations and date of the imminent badger cull are secret, but the aim is clear: to see if marksmen can shoot and kill badgers humanely and efficiently. If so, a wider cull will follow. For…
Plants that breathe nitrogen.
University of Nottingham
Each year more than 1 million tonnes of mineral nitrogen fertiliser is applied to arable and grass crops in the UK. This pollutes waterways through nitrate run-off and the atmosphere from the release of…
You don’t need to be Glastonbury’s Michael Eavis to be happy about renweables.
Ben Birchall/PA
One of Britain’s largest independent cheese producers, Wyke Farms in Somerset, picked up a commendation in the BusinessGreen Leaders awards this month for its efforts to become completely energy self-sufficient…
Big farmers win big under agricultural policy, but change is in the air.
Chris Ison/PA
Reforming the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy has never been easy, and that’s hardly surprising. It’s well established that when interests are concentrated together, such as those of farmers…
Farmers stand to gain from digital technology such as sensors to track livestock movement.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mythoto
A national broadband network and mobile sensor technologies could transform the Australian agribusiness sector but farmers have lagged behind the rest of the country in adopting telecommunications technology…
The Green Revolution that began in the 1940s brought modern methods to farming through selective breeding, machinery, and agrochemicals. But 60 years on a new, more sustainable approach is required. Published…
Britain’s best loved mammal, but no friend to cattle farmers.
Ben Birchall/PA
What do the pilot badger culls due to start this weekend in Gloucester and West Somerset hope to achieve? The official line is a 16% reduction of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in cattle herds over the next…