12/11/20 - Sugar beet yields, dairy jobs and Bird Girl

Farming Today

• Episode: 12/11/20 - Sugar beet yields, dairy jobs and Bird Girl
• Website: Farming Today
• Feed URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qj8q/episodes/downloads.rss
• Duration: 00:13:41
• Published: 2020-11-12 07:00

Harvest 2020 has been a fairly forgettable experience for many farmers - and now sugar beet growers can join the unhappy throng. Yields are down, party because of the weather and partly because of virus yellows - a disease spread by aphids that can cut yields by as much as 50%. This is only the second season farmers haven’t been able to use neonicotinoid pesticides, which were banned by the EU in 2018 because they can affect bees. So what next for the crop? The Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers says the UK may have to bring in more agricultural apprenticeships after Brexit, to address an anticipated crisis in recruitment to roles usually filled by eastern European labourers. No agriculture or horticulture jobs are included on the government’s shortage occupation list. The industry reckons workers from outside the UK fill 100,000 seasonal and permanent jobs on farms and some dairy farmers fear a lack of access to labour could lead to higher food prices or farm closures. And as our week of young voices re-thinking food and farming continues we hear from a young woman best known as bird girl. 18 year old Mya Rose Craig started birdwatching as a very young child and then set up Black2Nature to get more people from black and ethnic minority communities to engage with nature. Presented by Charlotte Smith Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Heather Simons