A bespoke Cowsignals® workshop organised by Haines Watts Rural Business LLP attracted 50 dairy farmers from across Devon and Cornwall. The basis of Cowsignals® is observing the cow’s body language and translating it to management. It lays a solid foundation for the management of farms and helps to demonstrate how to monitor and improve management to ensure that farmers and cows are achieving optimum health, performance and welfare on farms.
The special training day sponsored by Cornish Mutual and Harpers Home Mix Ltd with funding accessed via Healthy Livestock, was held at Shernick...
South Molton’s fifth Christmas Fatstock Show was held on Sunday 8 December, as part of the town’s Big Christmas Festival weekend. The Christmas Fatstock Show is firmly rooted in agriculture and any visitor to it experiences a real taste of the area’s farming tradition. This is the one day of the year that sees the Pannier Market returning to its roots, with pens of sheep (and carcasses) beingshown and subsequently auctioned on the day. Mr Ron Tapp and his son Andrew took the Championship once again, as they did in 2011. As sheep are such an important part of agriculture on Exmoor (with...
Haines Watts Rural Business LLP, sister firm to Bideford-based Chartered Accountants Haines Watts North Devon LLP, announce the appointment of Lucy Thomas as a farming consultant. Rural Business LLP agricultural consultants assist with decision making in response to ever-changing agricultural market conditions and cover all aspects of farm business management with clients across the South West.
A farmer’s daughter, Lucy graduated from Harper Adams with honours gaining experience in Land agency including Land Sales, Single Farm Payment and Planning when working for Rendells. Lucy...
Bicton College, Devon’s specialist land-based college, and The Dartington Hall Trust are to join forces to establish a new centre of educational excellence on the Dartington Hall estate.
‘Bicton College@Dartington’, a new and exciting partnership, will open up access to land-based education in Devon, strengthen the county’s reputation as a global leader in agricultural innovation and help to lay the foundations for a more sustainable farming future.
Alex Stevens, Senior Food and Farming Adviser, NFU in the South West commented "The NFU whole-...
Are you eligible for Basic Payment Scheme? On the 1st January 2015, Single Farm Payment will be replaced by the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS). Under BPS you will have to be eligible to claim, and greening requirements will make up 30% of your BPS payment.
To be eligible for BPS you will need to: 1. be an active farmer 2. have at least 5 hectares of eligible BPS land 3. have at least 5 BPS entitlements
Greening: Crop Diversification (also known as the three crop rule), is mandatory under the BPS greening rules, which may require farmers to grow a minimum number of different...
The abundance of crop pests in developing countries may be greatly underestimated, posing a significant threat to some of the world’s most important food producing nations, according to research led by the University of Exeter.
Data on the known distributions of almost 2,000 crop-destroying organisms in 195 countries were analysed in the first global assessment of the factors determining the distribution of crop pests.
Dr Dan Bebber and Professor Sarah Gurr, of Biosciences at the University of Exeter, found that if all countries had levels of scientific and technical...
A Devon Food Conference heard a call today for a move to sustainable agriculture if we are to feed the world over the next decades.
Colin Tudge, world renowned author of 'Feeding the World is Easy' and the mover behind the Campaign for Real Farming ( http://www.campaignforrealfarming.org/ ) was speaking at a meeting organised by the Anglican Diocese of Exeter. He claimed that agriculture was the most important activity people undertake and holds the key to tackling many of our current problems, from obesity to diabetes to famines. Critical to this is for agriculture to be...
