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Farming Today: 01/07/19: Fly-tipping, Lincolnshire flooding, soft fruit

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01/07/19: Fly-tipping, Lincolnshire flooding, soft fruit

BBC Radio 4 - Farming Today, 01/07/19: Fly-tipping, Lincolnshire flooding, soft fruit

We hear from a farmer whose crops have been ruined by fly-tippers

Three weeks on from the start of heavy rains in Lincolnshire, we catch up with some of the farmers whose fields were flooded.

Last year in England, local authorities recorded just under a million incidents of fly-tipping. But those figures don't include cases where the waste has been cleared by private landowners, often farmers. It's the landowner's responsibility to remove anything dumped on their property.  We speak to one farmer in Essex who may have lost 25 acres of beans after his field was targeted by fly-tippers.

It's three weeks since heavy rains started in Lincolnshire, but for householders with flooded homes and farmers who saw hundreds of acres of farmland underwater, the impact of the rain is still being felt. We hear from farmers who say crops have been destroyed, but more importantly, soil has been badly compacted.

And over the last few years, blueberries have become the second most commonly grown summer berry in the UK - we produce nearly 41 thousand tonnes of them! We speak to a blueberry farmer in Scotland.

Presented by Sybil Ruscoe
Produced by Heather Simons

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