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Farming Today: 15/05/21 - Farming Today This Week: Action Plan for Animal Welfare. ELMS trials, tackling rural loneliness

15/05/21 - Farming Today This Week: Action Plan for Animal Welfare. ELMS trials, tackling rural loneliness

BBC Radio 4 - Farming Today, 15/05/21 - Farming Today This Week: Action Plan for Animal Welfare. ELMS trials, tackling rural loneliness

We scrutinise the government's new "Action Plan for Animal Welfare".

Caz Graham looks into the government's new "Action Plan for Animal Welfare" and finds out about the latest ELMS trials.

The Government's new "Action Plan for Animal Welfare" is wide ranging, but the headline promise is to recognise animal sentience in law. That recognition was added to EU law back in 1997 under the Amsterdam Treaty, but since Brexit, animal welfare campaign groups had been worried it could be lost here. The action plan also mentions the introduction of new laws to crack down on illegal hare coursing and plans to give police more powers to protect farm animals from dogs. There are also plans to 'improve animal welfare at slaughter' and 'examine the use of cages for poultry and farrowing crates for pigs'. Caz Graham hears from the NFU and the RSPCA.

The biggest change in farming for a generation is underway as we move away from the EU’s subsidy system. Each devolved administration will introduce it's own new system for supporting agriculture - in England it's a "public money for public goods" system, with the new Environmental Land Management Scheme - or ELMS - still being designed. We visit one of the DEFRA trials in Wiltshire where ecologists and farmers are working together to assess the worth of "environmentally sustainable actions".

Spring 2021 has been unusually dry as well as cold. It's meant grass hasn't been growing as fast and some farmers are already grazing their cattle on fields meant for next winter's silage. We visit a research station run by the seed company, Germinal, where they're developing new kinds of drought resistant forage.

And we hear about a scheme in North Yorkshire which is helping retired farmers struggling with loneliness and isolation by pairing them up with members of the Young Farmers for regular social chats.

Presented by Caz Graham
Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Heather Simons

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