Arable

A public consultation into post-Brexit regulation of precision breeding techniques such as gene editing (GE), will take place this autumn Government has announced.

The characteristics that make up the best performing cereal farms in England have been explored using data from Defra’s Farm Business Survey.

The eagerly anticipated National Food Strategy (NFS) for England has set out a number of formal recommendations for protecting food production standards in trade deals.

Leaving the Brexit transition period without an EU trade deal would be ‘a cakewalk’ for the food industry in comparison to the pandemic, National Food Strategy (NFS) chief Henry Dimbleby has said.

Farm groups have welcomed Government plans to scrap EU greening requirements for direct payments from 2021.

Several grain merchants including ADM and Frontier have announced they will no longer be sending grain samplers on to farms, following growing concerns over health and safety.

A top Welsh Government (WG) official has said he expects ‘business casualties’ from the twin pressures of Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic.

A farmer has paid a special tribute to the NHS by planting thousands of sunflowers to create a message which spans over 200ft in his field. 

Industry leaders have called for Government to provide ‘critical’ data on the UK’s figure for access to seasonal workers, in a bid to prevent labour shortfalls.

The First Minister of Wales, Mark Drakeford, has said his Government will be ‘sensitive’ to coronavirus issues faced by farmers when setting a Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) phaseout timetable.