Surviving or Thriving? Farms
Money Box
BBC
4.2 • 825 Ratings
🗓️ 9 September 2023
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rising costs are having an impact on almost everyone, but that impact is very different for different sections of the economy. Rising food production costs are pushing up everyone’s grocery bills, and squeezing farmers’ profit margins. How are farms adapting to survive difficult times? Are any of them finding new ways to thrive?
Felicity Hannah travels to South Wales to meet two farmers, both running family businesses. Kevin and Sian, who, since covid, have diversified their 200 acre mixed farm into a profit making business. And Abi who works alongside her parents and uncle on a 700 acres mixed farm of dairy, sheep, arable, and beef has seen costs spiral but has long term financial solutions for her family business to thrive again.
The programme also talks to Minette Batters, president of the National Farmers’ Union which represents 47,000 farming businesses across England and Wales, to ask what does the future look like for farmers.
Series Producer Smita Patel Editor Clare Fordham Studio Engineer Rod Farquhar
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | On a winter's night in 1974, a crime took place that would obsess the nation. |
| 0:07.0 | It was an extraordinary news story. |
| 0:09.0 | The story of an aristocrat, Lord Lucan, who's said to have killed the family Nanny, |
| 0:14.0 | mistaking her for his wife, then somehow just disappeared. |
| 0:18.0 | One of the great mysteries in English criminal history. We're still looking for Leukin. |
| 0:22.1 | It's honestly one of the most powerful stories |
| 0:24.4 | of my lifetime. |
| 0:26.0 | I'm Alex von Tundselman. |
| 0:27.4 | This is The Lucan Obsession. |
| 0:29.2 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.7 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:39.2 | Before COVID, we was making little or no profit on the farm, and now the farm's thriving. |
| 0:45.6 | Obviously, to diversify, you've got to invest, so there's been big investment to get to where we are. |
| 0:50.0 | There's lots of costs increasing all the time. |
| 0:54.1 | What we cannot have is a country that becomes farm shop, Britain, |
| 0:58.3 | whereby we are just producing food for a small proportion of society. |
| 1:02.9 | We've got to have affordable food for everybody, whatever budget they're on. |
| 1:10.0 | The rising costs have been an absolute nightmare. |
| 1:12.7 | There's no option for commercial farmers to be able to say, |
| 1:16.0 | I really do need a little bit more money because I'm struggling to pay my bills. |
| 1:19.9 | It's not how that works. |
| 1:23.5 | The rising cost of food has been a really big part of the pressure on households. |
... |
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