Livestock-worrying, Sugar sector, Small farms

Farming Today

• Episode: Livestock-worrying, Sugar sector, Small farms
• Website: Farming Today
• Feed URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qj8q/episodes/downloads.rss
• Duration: 00:13:33
• Published: 2018-02-23 07:00

The police want more powers to tackle dog attacks on livestock. A report from the National Police Chiefs Council says dog owners should take more responsibility - but that a complete overhaul of what it calls the "outdated and sometimes ineffective rules surrounding livestock worrying" is also needed. Five rural forces have analysed their figures on dog attacks over the past four years. They found 1,705 recorded incidents of livestock worrying, with nearly 2,000 animals killed and 1,600 injured - at an estimated cost of £250,000. Charlotte Smith finds out more from Inspector Alex Butterfield, part of the North Yorkshire Police team behind the report. In the UK, the average size of a farm is about 200 acres and over the past few years, the trend has been for farms to get bigger, thereby advantage of economies of scale. But there are still thousands of small farms and those are the ones we've been looking at this week - asking amongst other things, how they make things add up financially. Helen Greenbank farms a 150-acre hill farm in the northern fells of the Lake District - while five miles away, her sister Sandra Fawcett farms sheep and a small herd of cattle on a 125-acre grassland farm. Our reporter Caz Graham went to meet them. 60% of the sugar used in the UK is grown here, from sugar beet. The rest is imported - with more than 600 thousand tonnes brought in each year from the EU and beyond. British growers are currently feeling pretty optimistic: they've just finished harvesting a bumper 2018 crop and the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Select Committee has launched an inquiry into how the sector will be affected by Brexit - and what a future sugar trade policy should look like. Clare Worden has been to the Cambridgeshire Fens to meet Michael Sly, chairman of the National Farmers Union's Sugar Board. Meanwhile to find out how British beet growers fit into the global picture, Charlotte speaks to Ruud Schers, a market analyst from RaboResearch. Presented by Charlotte Smith; produced by Lucy Taylor.