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Farming Today: Farm energy, Farm secretaries, Next generation

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24/11/2014

Farm energy, Farm secretaries, Next generation

BBC Radio 4 - Farming Today, Farm energy, Farm secretaries, Next generation

Could farmers be producing more of the energy we use in the future?

Farmers could be making more low-carbon power, according to a Farm Power coalition report. Charlotte Smith asks how they can balance energy production with food production.

Farmers could be supplying more low-carbon power, according to a report from the Farm Power Coalition. The coalition is made up of farming groups, businesses and non-governmental organisations, and it estimates that there are significant untapped resources across UK farms to produce low-carbon power. The report claims around ten gigawats - that's equivalent to more than three times the capacity of the proposed new nuclear power plant at Hinkley - could be produced on farms. But how do we balance that with the need to produce food? Charlotte Smith finds out.

Farm secretaries play a vital role in keeping farms' paperwork up to date, but the Institute of Agricultural Secretaries and Administrators says finding new recruits is getting harder. Anna Hill's been to meet a group of farm secretaries in Suffolk who were attending a special briefing on how reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy will change the work they do.

And what opportunities will agriculture bring for the next generation? Farming Today starts a week-long look at the farmers of the future.

Presented by Charlotte Smith and produced by Emma Campbell.

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