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Farming Today: 23/09/20 - Agricultural colleges during COVID, DEFRA's Brexit preparations, rural services and cockle fishing

US secretary of agriculture, EFRA Committee reports, haricot beans

23/09/20 - Agricultural colleges during COVID, DEFRA's Brexit preparations, rural services and cockle fishing

BBC Radio 4 - Farming Today, 23/09/20 - Agricultural colleges during COVID, DEFRA's Brexit preparations, rural services and cockle fishing

As our lives become more restricted again because of COVID, how are agricultural colleges coping with teaching a practical course online?

Boris Johnson has announced new restrictions across England, to try to stem the increase in the number of Covid case, but schools and colleges remain open. As thousands of students return to agricultural colleges across the country, how are they and their lecturers coping with a new kind of learning...online? At Wiltshire College, Lackham, agricultural diplomas are being taught through a combination of online tutorials and in-person lessons -we join a group of students.

We get the low down on DEFRA's latest preparations for Brexit after the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee grill George Eustice.

Thirteen rural groups are calling on the government to give more equal funding to rural services, to ‘level them up’ to urban provision, in the light of the Covid pandemic. A report published by the Rural Coalition says countryside communities have long faced the challenges of “sparsity, remoteness, poor connectivity and a history of unequal funding and patchy service delivery”. It says some communities which are heavily dependent on tourism and seasonal work are now at risk of being left further behind.

And a row has broken out in Boston in Lincolnshire after the town’s Shellfishermen were told to stop work, in order to leave food for seabirds. The entire cockle fishing fleet is tied-up after government regulators decided that enough shellfish had already been caught this year. The Lincolnshire Wash is a protected site for seabirds which are allocated a proportion of the cockle beds to feed on. 

Presented by Anna Hill
Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Heather Simons

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23/09/20 - Agricultural colleges during COVID, DEFRA's Brexit preparations, rural services and cockle fishing

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