Rural News

Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) is using satellite imagery to offer virtual tours of its upland research farms in Perthshire.

Matt Fuller has been named this year’s winner of the Farm Sprayer Operator of the Year (FSOOTY) award at the Cereals LIVE virtual event.

The Royal Agricultural University (RAU) is preparing to welcome new and returning students to its Cirencester campus for the start of the autumn term.

As we face a global pandemic that is unprecedented in most of our lifetimes, there has been much in the press about utilising the ‘blitz spirit’ to get us through these challenging times. And it appears that one thing is certainly comparable to war time – farm shops are reporting a dramatic increase in business as many consumers switch to buying local.

BASIS members joining this year’s Cereals LIVE event, taking place digitally on 10th and 11th June, can still collect the BASIS points they would ordinarily pick up at the show.

On Thursday 18th June 2020, Elliott’s traditional family butchers of Kislingbury will open a new on-farm shop serving home reared meat, local produce, eggs, cheese, vegetables and store cupboard sundries.

Leading farm education charity, LEAF Education in partnership with Coleg Cambria Llysfasi have launched the annual National Competition in Food, Farming and Environment.

KWS have missed seeing you this summer but you can still get all the information about their key varieties you need from the new virtual crop tour. Cereals 360 makes it possible to experience all their key varieties of barley, hybrid rye, oilseed rape and wheat.

A scheme offering dairy farmers up to £10,000 each as a result of the Covid-19 crisis will open for applications on 18th June, the government has confirmed.

Hot potato Bud the Spud will make his television debut this summer as part of a £100,000 marketing push.

The UK’s biggest organic on-farm conference, OF&G National Organic Combinable Crops (NOCC), is taking place virtually this year, with a series of interactive seminars and online farm tours led by experts in UK food and farming. They are free to join and open to all.

After the early weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic left many supermarket shelves bare, and with home delivery slots still hard to come by, many people are now opting for their local farm shop as a more relaxed, socially distant way of getting supplies.