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Farming Today: Food security, deer in Scotland, sustainable pesticide usage, tagging salmon

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11/10/2017

Food security, deer in Scotland, sustainable pesticide usage, tagging salmon

BBC Radio 4 - Farming Today, Food security, deer in Scotland, sustainable pesticide usage, tagging salmon

The 2017 Global Food Security Index says Brexit poses an extreme risk to UK food security.

This year's Global Food Security Index from the Economist Intelligence Unit says Brexit could pose an 'extreme risk' to the UK's future food security status.

Global food security has dropped for the first time in four years, according to this year's Global Food Security Index from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).
The report assesses the affordability, availability and quality and safety of food across 113 countries - with the UK ranking third highest in food security this year, behind Ireland and the United States. But the report also warned that Brexit could pose an "extreme risk" to the nation's future progress. Anna Hill speaks to Robert Powell, a Senior Consultant at the EIU.

All this week on Farming Today, we're talking deer - and in Scotland, managing deer numbers has long been a contentious subject. Currently, only specialist areas such as National Parks or sites of environmental value have cull targets set by law: elsewhere, Deer Management Groups are free to set their own. There has been criticism that this system is too loose and vague to be properly effective. Moira Hickey's been to Glentanner Estate in the Cairngorms National Park, to find out more.

The European Commission has told member states they need to step up efforts to use pesticides more sustainably.
It says not enough is being done - particularly when it comes to implementing Integrated Pest Management systems, whereby various control methods are combined to limit the use of chemicals. Emma Hamer from the National Farmers' Union and Ian Dillon from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds share their views on whether farmers could be doing more.

Few creatures face as many perils on their life journey as the humble salmon. From our rivers, they swim thousands of miles into the Atlantic ocean before returning home to breed - so perhaps it's not surprising that only a small percentage survive. 
For ten years, scientists at the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust have been tagging salmon to find out how and why the lucky ones make it: and now an EU grant is set to fund more wide-ranging and effective surveillance. Toby Field went to see the tagging in action, on the banks of the River Frome.

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