Farming Today

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Farming Today: 05/10/22 Potatoes with less ploughing, Leaf Assurance Scheme, Hare Coursing

05/10/22 Potatoes with less ploughing, Leaf Assurance Scheme, Hare Coursing

BBC Radio 4 - Farming Today, 05/10/22 Potatoes with less ploughing, Leaf Assurance Scheme, Hare Coursing

Can potatoes be grown with less ploughing and soil disturbance?

Can potatoes be grown with less ploughing and soil disturbance? And assurance scheme Leaf ups it's environmental standards.

Field trials are being carried out to see if potatoes can be grown with less disturbance to the soil. Tractors can make between five and seven passes of a field even before the seed potato is planted. Now Dyson Farms is testing to see if potatoes can be grown in a way which has a lighter touch on the soil and uses fewer inputs. Some are being grown with straw covering them with no fertilisers or irrigation, and others are being grown using digestate as a topping. 

One of the UK's first sustainable assurance labels for food, is bringing in new higher standards for carbon footprint assessments. LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming) was set up nearly 20 years ago and operates in 19 other countries.  The revisions include raising the bar on things like greenhouse gases, carbon sequestration and carbon footprinting.

And every autumn the season starts for the illegal blood sport of hare coursing which brings with it a wave of crime, threats, and sometimes violence to rural parts of the UK. Reporter Dan O'Brien has been out with Wiltshire Police who are patrolling Salisbury Plain using thermal imaging drones and night-vision cameras. Hare courses often stream footage to viewers who bet on things like which dogs will kill the most hares. 

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