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Farming Today: 02/12/2022 - Cost of food production, free-range turkeys, equine stud

02/12/2022 - Cost of food production, free-range turkeys, equine stud

BBC Radio 4 - Farming Today, 02/12/2022 - Cost of food production, free-range turkeys, equine stud

The cost of food production, falling turkey sales, and an IVF clinic for horses.

Farmers earn less than a penny for much of the supermarket food they produce, a free-range turkey producer fears he won't sell his turkeys, and a stud and an IVF clinic for horses in Gloucestershire.

Farmers earn less than a penny a pack for much of the food they produce for supermarkets, according to a new report 'Unpicking Food'. The charity Sustain says it’s often less than one per cent. They say supply chains are too long and complex, resulting in producers losing out. For instance, the report says a 480 gram pack of supermarket cheddar costs a dairy farmer £1.48 to produce, yet he receives less than a penny of the £2.50 selling price.

One of the consequences of the bird flu outbreak has been a flurry of news stories about a shortage of turkeys for Christmas. 'Christmas Dinner at Risk!' warned headlines after the British Poultry Council predicted 'big big shortages', because around half of the free-range poultry grown for this year’s dinner plates has either died or been culled due to the disease. But the widespread publicity about shortages has had unintended and undesirable consequences for some small-scale turkey farmers. Paul White produces around 500 free-range turkeys near Burnley in Lancashire, but he says he's only sold 10 per cent of his birds, when normally he'd have sold half by now. He says customers are panicking about shortages and buying frozen turkeys in supermarkets. 

Equine vet Emma Tomlinson runs a stud and an IVF clinic for horses in Gloucestershire, alongside a mobile equine vet service. On 150 acres of organic pasture - which was once her dad’s dairy farm - she's created an international business, collecting and storing semen from stallions, harvesting eggs and transplanting embryos in mares. It's a top-end service for top-end clients - show jumpers, polo ponies, eventers and dressage horses. She says when she started the business 20 years ago, she was the first commercial embryo transfer service in England.

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02/12/2022 - Cost of food production, free-range turkeys, equine stud

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