10/02/21 Potential of peat, spinach emails, culling male chicks

Farming Today

• Episode: 10/02/21 Potential of peat, spinach emails, culling male chicks
• Website: Farming Today
• Feed URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qj8q/episodes/downloads.rss
• Duration: 00:13:27
• Published: 2021-02-11 18:09

The potential of peat as a carbon sink and conservation habitat is being ignored by the government, according to the Wildlife Trusts. The group says a nationwide strategy for peat was promised back in December 2018 but is now overdue, and not enough is being done to create a strategy to benefit society. The government says it will set out its plans this year. Scientists at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have developed a technology where spinach was used as an early warning system to alert for dangerous chemicals in groundwater. They introduced nano-particles into the plant which triggered an email to be sent to researchers on their phones. We ask whether this could be used by farmers. Germany recently became the first country in the world to announce plans to ban the mass culling of day old chicks from next year, and France has now followed suit. As only female hens lay eggs, male chicks from laying-hen varieties are not needed and in the UK they are currently killed at one day old, using gas. We hear about the alternatives to this practice. Presented by Anna Hill and produced by Beatrice Fenton.