Farming Today This Week

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Farming Today: Farming Today This Week: Environmental Improvement Plan; Fruit growers; Potatoes; Rural Poverty.

Farming Today This Week: Environmental Improvement Plan; Fruit growers; Potatoes; Rural Poverty.

BBC Radio 4 - Farming Today, Farming Today This Week: Environmental Improvement Plan; Fruit growers; Potatoes; Rural Poverty.

Government targets to improve the environment; potatoes; top fruit; rural poverty.

Government publishes its new Environmental Improvement Plan. Potato processors pay farmers more to keep them growing spuds. Growers stop planting fruit trees. Rural poverty.

The Government published its new "Environmental Improvement Plan" this week,  promising to halt decline in nature by 2030 - and outlining how it plans to deliver the Environment Act, with specific targets and deadlines. It includes: targets to tackle pollution from water companies and farmers and improve water quality; restoring a million acres of wildlife habitat; and a fund to protect species at risk.  Defra wants the new Environmental Land Management Schemes or ELMS to be taken up by 60-80% of farmers.

It's been a tough 12 months for potato farmers with huge hikes in fertilizer prices and a drought which forced them to irrigate much more than usual. Many are giving up on the crop altogether. We hear from two brothers who are drastically reducing their production and speak to the big potato processor McCain about what it's doing to persuade its farmers to keep planting spuds.

Apple and pear producers have cancelled more than a third of orders for new trees this season, because they say the sums just don't add up. The figures, from the British Growers Association say costs for farmers have risen by nearly a quarter but the price they're paid for their fruit by supermarkets has risen by less than one per cent. They warn the industry's on a knife-edge. We speak to a farmer who's just cancelled an order for 72,000 new trees.

All week we've been talking about an often hidden aspect of rural life - poverty. The Rural Services Network says : If England’s rural communities were treated as a distinct region, their need for levelling up would be greater than any other. We hear from people who've been homeless and those who are on the brink of losing everything.

Presenter = Charlotte Smith
Producer = Rebecca Rooney

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Farming Today This Week: Environmental Improvement Plan; Fruit growers; Potatoes; Rural Poverty.

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