News
Emerging livestock diseases – another unwanted climate change effect
Farmers Weekly Insect-borne livestock diseases that were once confined to the tropics are increasingly likely to threaten farms in the UK as climate change expands the number of countries where they can thrive. A 2019 study,…
Farmer Focus: Milk price cuts amount to 12.5p/litre this year
Farmers Weekly Things are suddenly go go go! March was wet, relentlessly wet, and it held back our spring work. We only managed to spray herbicide on the maize fields and sneak the first lot of nitrogen onto the wheat by the…
Editor’s View: Retirement is tough but also a gift
Farmers Weekly How simple it can be to put off till tomorrow what doesn’t have to be done today – yet often these things have a habit of catching up with us. Backpage ruminator Will Evans this week pays tribute to a farmer…
Sheep farmer ‘re-inherits’ family farm sold to a neighbour
Farmers Weekly A sheep farmer whose great-uncle sold off the family farm has been told he will now inherit it back from a neighbour. Richard Thirlwell, 43, from Simonburn in Northumberland, ran into the farm’s then-owner,…
Will’s World: Silence echoes after sorrow of a final milking
Farmers Weekly A couple of us took a friend of ours out for a pint at the village pub the other night. Nothing particularly momentous in that, you might think, except that earlier that day he and his family milked their cows…
Farmland values continue to rise in early 2023
Farmers Weekly Land values have continued to rise in the first quarter of 2023, with most agents expecting the slightly increased supply to continue through the year. January to March saw values for bare land rise by between…
FSA crime hotline going unanswered after meat scandal
Farmers Weekly A key hotline for staff at food processing firms to report food crime went unanswered during working hours just weeks after claims of widespread rule breaches at a large meat processor. The Food Crime…
Feed and slurry key to pig producers’ emissions reduction
Farmers Weekly Livestock are often seen as key contributors to greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) – including methane from ruminants and the carbon footprint of animal feed based on imported products such as palm oil or soya. As…
Ex-beef farmer reveals how he grew award-winning OSR crop
Farmers Weekly Tucked into the south-west corner of Scotland in an area dominated by livestock, lies the Lawson’s arable farm which yielded a surprise 6.2t/ha crop of oilseed rape. What started out as a suckler farm with up…
NAAC contractor price guide 2023-24
Farmers Weekly The NAAC has released its annual contractor price averages, which serve as a useful guide when working out the going rate for a particular service. Jill Hewitt, the association’s chief executive, reports The…
