Meet The Farmers

In this episode I speak to Silas Hedley-Lawrence who is herd manager at English Farm in Oxfordshire. English Farm is registered to the Pasture Fed Livestock Association and is also registered as organic. They recently started their own butchery on the farm.

Episode 43 comes to you from the Tendring Hundred Show which was held back in July. Ben chairs a discussion between Emma Stobart (RSPB), David Lord (local farmer), Dave Smart (Essex Wildlife Trust) and Barbara Sharp (Essex Beekeepers) about farming, conservation and the future of the countryside in the Countryside Ring at the Show.

In episode 42 of Meet the Farmers we focus on hens and I visited Alaistaire Brice who farms in Suffolk under the Havensfield Happy Hens brand. Alaistaire and his wife Fiona work with 16 other farmers across Suffolk and Norfolk. They have 16,000 birds of their own and a further 160,000 on contract to them on other farms, selling around a million eggs per week.  Particular thanks to the Chadacre Agricultural Trust for supporting this episode.

In this episode Ben travels to Leicestershire to the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust's Allerton Project to speak to farming legend Phil Jarvis who at the the time had just returned from the annual 'Cereals' event. Phil has farmed at the Allerton Project since the 1990s and since then has experimented with a vast range of strategies to understand how to farm the land in a more sustainable manner, maintaining the highest yields whilst also safeguarding the environment, creating new habitats and boosting biodiversity.

In episode 40 of Meet the Farmers Ben speaks to Richard Bower who farms with his father Ray in Staffordshire. Originally a traditional beef and arable farm the Bowers are looking to future and diversifying the business in a broad sense, including going into tourism by establishing a large children's playbarn. Richard has a keen interest in farm politics and has previously stood to be Vice President of the NFU.

Katie Anderson (aka Female Farmer UK) is a young farmer originally from Essex who is now living and working in Kent. Katie recently founded Paddlesworth Produce through which she directly markets her own produce as well as the produce of other local producers. As part of this she has created a 'breakfast box', a 'Sunday roast box' and a 'BBQ box'. We talk a good deal about women in ag, what it's like being a young farmer starting your own business, farm education, blogging and 'farmer identity'.

Episode 38 of the Meet the Farmers podcast is now available featuring Norfolk arable farmer Kit Papworth. Kit farms alongside his cousin Tim growing cereals as well as a large amount of seed, oil seed rape, potatoes, sugar beet and vining peas on sandy loam soils. He also manages a large amount of countryside stewardship land and contract farms on behalf of a large number of different landowners. We talk a good deal about #FarmerMentalHealth in the light of the death of his father, David, last year. We also talk about sugar beet, grain storage and Anglia Farmers of which Kit is a former Chair.

Episode 37 of Meet the Farmers features Wiltshire farmer and Chief Executive of the Soil Association Helen Browning. From her inspirational great aunts to food ethics and from pigs and dairying to games of squash and agroforestry we cover a lot of ground in this episode!

Ben's guests in this episode are Suffolk arable farmers Brian and Patrick Barker. The Barkers farm cereals, herbage grass seed, linseed and spring beans across around 500ha of land. They are a Strategic Farm for the AHDB, a Demonstration Farm for LEAF and Patrick is on the steering group of the Nature Friendly Farming Network.

In this episode Ben speaks to Georgie Bray who is the Farmer Manager at the RSPB's Hope Farm in Cambridgeshire, UK. The farm aims to place conservation alongside profit as one of it's key aims. Ben and Georgie speak about a wide range of issues to do with food, farming and the environment.

Ben speaks to entrepreneur and organic farmer William Kendall in Suffolk. William is the Chair of Cawston Press.