Blog

It's the time of year again to switch off the vacuum pumps, stop making ice and shut the farm gate as we hit the peak three to four weeks of our summer dry period

Reporter Chris Brayford discusses the impact livestock worrying can have on farmers and why respect from dog owners for the countryside is paramount to solving the problem in the future.

Magnus Brown, 21, is a dairy farmer from Abbots Bromley in Staffordshire. He is an NFU Student and Young Farmer Ambassador and a trainee solicitor at Roythornes

Amy works on her family’s tenanted farm at Halsall, Lancashire. Working mainly with her dad, Amy farms 285 hectares (704 acres) of arable crops and 550 beef cross cattle which are all reared through to finishing. You can follow her on Instagram @amygingewilkinson

Kate is a fifth-generation farmer running the 750-hectare (1,853-acre) Hundleshope Farm on the Haystoun Estate, Peebles, where the family have been tenants for 150 years. She runs the hill unit with her husband Ed and their four children. She is also a vet and chair of Quality Meat Scotland

Elgan Thomas, 26, is a dairy farmer from Llanelli in Carmarthenshire

This week from Alex Black, Farmers Guardian head of news and business

"Intensive farming, with its reliance on artificial nitrogen, vanishing peat and corrupting the soil, will not see many more tomorrows. It is literally unsustainable"

Dan Hawes grew up on an arable farm in Suffolk and now produces strawberry and raspberry plants for the UK fruit market with Blaise Plants, sister company to Hugh Lowe Farms, Kent. The business grows outside, under tunnels and in glasshouses and produces more than four million plants a year. The arable side includes environmental schemes, with a mix of wheat, oilseed rape, beans and barley crops

Dana Bradley-Allen, 17, is from Barnsley in South Yorkshire and she is studying a Level 2 Agriculture course at Barnsley College's Wigfield Farm