22/06/21 - The impact of trade deals, growing blueberries, enhancing habitats around Lough Neagh

Farming Today

• Episode: 22/06/21 - The impact of trade deals, growing blueberries, enhancing habitats around Lough Neagh
• Website: Farming Today
• Feed URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qj8q/episodes/downloads.rss
• Duration: 00:13:35
• Published: 2021-06-22 07:00

The list of new trade deals grows - Norway, Iceland, Lichtenstein, Japan and Australia - and the Trans Pacific Partnership is on the horizon. Farmers are concerned about the impact of cheaper imports because of those deals and now, the NFU is demanding the Government has a strategy to combat that. It also wants more support for farmers who want to export to countries across the world. Sales of blueberries have grown ten-fold over the last decade, and in the last 12 months we spent £480 million on them. We visit one farm where they're tapping into that expanding market. And almost 150 farmers have banded together to improve water quality and wildlife habitat on the shore and along rivers which flow into Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland. They’ve fenced off rivers, planted trees and are using specialist breeds of native cattle. As a result of two big conservation schemes more than 600 hectares of wet grassland are now being managed for breeding waders like curlew. Presented by Anna Hill Produced in Bristol by Heather Simons