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The Food Programme: Farming on the Urban Fringe

Farming on the Urban Fringe

10/05/2009

BBC Radio 4 - The Food Programme, Farming on the Urban Fringe

The problems and opportunities faced by farmers who work on the fringes of towns.

John Waite looks at the problems and opportunities faced by farmers who work on the fringes of towns, and finds out about some schemes bringing the two closer together.

Picnickers, art groups and frolicking dogs - some of the daily problems faced by farmers on the urban fringes, with a population less personally connected with life on a working farm than ever before.  

John Waite looks at the challenges and opportunities facing the farmers living cheek by jowl with their urban neighbours, and at some of the attempts being made to bring the two closer together.  

We hear from Wayside Farm in Kings Langley, Hertfordshire, which last year took part in Open Farm Sunday to help explain farming to their neighbours and reduce the casual damage and trespass caused by uninformed picnickers and dog walkers to their land. Caroline Drummond from LEAF, Linking Environment and Farming, which organises Open Farm Sunday explains why they run it.

John also visits Shabden Park Farm in Chipstead, Surrey, where Mark and Kirstie Banham have set up an on-farm butchery to sell direct to their town dwelling, commuting neighbours.

Sir Don Curry talks about the importance of reconnection, the main theme of 1991's Curry Report into the Future of Farming and Food.

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