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Farming Today: Tracking Wildfires, Making Slurry Safe, Sheep Rearing for Fashion

03/08/2018

Tracking Wildfires, Making Slurry Safe, Sheep Rearing for Fashion

BBC Radio 4 - Farming Today, Tracking Wildfires, Making Slurry Safe, Sheep Rearing for Fashion

Tracking wildfires by satellite, making slurry safe, and sheep rearing for fashion.

How satellite technology is tracking wildfires in Scotland, the Welsh inventor who's exploring how to make slurry safe and the fashion designer rearing her own wool.

Today we're at the Countryfile Live show at Blenheim Palace with Caz Graham. 
As the drought continues in much of the UK there are fears of further wildfires like those already seen in Europe and on Saddleworth Moor. Now breakthroughs in satellite imaging are helping scientists to better understand their effects in real time. Specialists from Scottish Natural Heritage are using the data to assess damage from wildfires in remote parts of Scotland.
An inventor in Wales is working out a way to make slurry safe by using an electric charge to separate the liquid from the fertiliser. Slurry - that pungent mix of cow muck, urine and waste water from the milking parlour - needs careful management. If it leaks into rivers the effects can be catastrophic - killing fish and polluting the environment. Gareth Morgan has been working with a college in Carmarthenshire to develop the project. 
We meet a fashion designer who's decided to source her own wool - by becoming a sheep farmer. Clare Johns now has a flock of sheep on her farm in Pembrokeshire.
And we hear from Secretary of State Michael Gove and the NFU's Minette Batters as they talk about the future of farming.

Presented by Caz Graham and produced in Bristol by Sally Challoner.

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