government

With the family farm tax hanging over the agricultural industry and the policy continuing to dominate headlines across national and farming press, Farmers Guardian puts readers’ questions directly to industry experts

In today's Farming in Five, chief reporter Rachael Brown reports on a letter sent by the Efra Committee chair, Alistair Carmichael to the Farming Minister calling on the Government to focus on five key areas to improve fairness and resilience in the food supply chain. Later today Mr Carmichael will be presenting his food supply chain fairness bill in Parliament. And the absence of rural crime in the Government's Crime and Policing Bill has been branded 'unacceptable' by a Liberal Democrat MP

In today's Farming in Five, chief reporter Rachael Brown reports on yesterday's emergency roundtable meeting on SFI, with the Farming Minister criticised for providing lack of clarity on the what the future redesign of SFI will look like, and for showing a lack of empathy for those farmers who missed out on SFI. She also reports on farmers defending Scottish Minister Mairi Gougeon and criticising the level abuse she received online, as she announced she is stepping down from her post after more that half of her life in politics. And don't forget to sign up to our free webinar on Inheritance Tax ( March 27), where an expert panel will be unpicking any updates from the Spring Statement the day before

Victoria Vyvyan, president of the CLA, said the country's planning system was in ‘crisis' and was ‘stagnating growth in the countryside'

Environmental groups back farmers and join condemnation of Government announcement

Mr Dunn said: "Out of the £2.4 billion of budget allocated for the full panoply of schemes under the Agricultural Transition Plan, we need to know how much has been allocated to each element"

Alistair Carmichael asked for clarification when IPAFFS , Defra's IT system import of products, animals, food and feed system was successfully updated and operating as intended to reflect the policy change made on January 10 in response to the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak

In a landmark event for nature conservation, the National Trust have released the first two pairs of Eurasian beavers to live in the wild in Purbeck, Dorset, after a new policy was announced by Defra and Natural England last week

Speaking on a panel giving evidence to the Efra Committee, Ms Wilson said she had been made aware of information that products of animal origin from Germany had been auto-cleared via Todcof in the last couple of weeks

NFU poultry board chair, James Mottershead said AI vaccination programme for birds need to be safe to give consumers the confidence to continue eating poultry products, and must not disrupt exports