Women in farming | A Woman’s Hour special

Woman's Hour

BBC

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness, Personal Journals

4.2 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 26 May 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In a special bank holiday programme, Anita Rani escapes from the studio and spends the day at a dairy farm in Devon to explore the reality of female farmers’ lives.

Farmer Lorna Burdge shows Anita what a day in her life as a dairy farmer involves, from milking at 6am to feeding calves, measuring grass, looking after her three children and tackling invoices in the office.

We hear about a groundbreaking three-year study into the health and wellbeing of female farmers announced by the University of Exeter and Farming Community Network. Dr Rebecca Wheeler, the project lead from the University of Exeter’s Centre for Rural Policy Research, and Linda Jones, from the charity Farming Community Network, explain why the study is needed, who they want to hear from and what they hope it will achieve.

Farming Today and Countryfile presenter Charlotte Smith gives Anita some of the context and policy changes of the last few years in the industry which some say have impacted farmers’ wellbeing.

Anita has a cup of tea in the farmhouse kitchen and hears from three women farmers about the challenges, stresses, achievements and joys of their jobs. Joining Anita and Lorna are Sinead Fenton, an edible flower and herb farmer in East Sussex, and Caroline Millar, who has an arable, lamb and beef farm near Dundee in Scotland.

What action is being taken to address some of the challenges for women in this industry? Anita hears from Rachel Hallos, the Vice-President of the National Farmers’ Union for England and Wales, an organisation which represents thousands of farmers and is looking at the experience of female farmers.

And finally, Katie Davies, who was awarded Farming Woman of the Year at the National Women in Agriculture Awards 2025, tells Anita why she’s trying to inspire more women to get into farming.

For more information on the three-year study on the wellbeing of female farmers, and how to take part in the research, head to: https://exe.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5pqBN1BBqIxEns2

Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Olivia Bolton Assistant Producer: Claire Fox Editor: Karen Dalziel

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, it's Lucy Worsley here and we're back with a brand new series of ladies swindlers.
0:07.5	Promise never to mention a word of what is going on.
0:10.1	Join me and my all-female team of detectives as we revisit the audacious crimes of women trying to make it in a world made for men.
0:19.5	This is a story of working class women trying to get by.
0:24.4	This is survival.
0:25.3	Join me for the second season of Lady Swindlers, where true crime meets history with a twist.
0:31.4	Listen first on BBC Sounds.
0:36.3	BBC Sounds, music, Radio, podcasts.
0:40.5	Hello, I'm Anita Rani, and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4.
0:47.3	Hello and welcome to a very special bank holiday programme from a delightfully sunny dairy farm in Devon. It's early in the
0:56.6	morning and I'm standing on a hill near Honiton in the Blackdown Hills overlooking the farm
1:01.6	with the farmhouse, huge green fields, cow sheds, a milking parlour, lots of cows all in front of me.
1:09.5	We're spending a day on this farm to find out what life is really like for women farmers
1:14.1	in the UK at the moment, from the stresses and challenges to the achievements and joys.
1:20.3	Give you some facts.
1:21.8	Agriculture employs around 460,000 people in the UK and has traditionally been seen as a male-dominated industry.
1:29.9	In England in 2024, 84% of principal farmers and holders were male and only 16% were female.
1:38.3	In Scotland, that drops to just 7%.
1:41.3	But what you may not know is that women actually make up 55% of the agricultural
1:47.9	workforce in England and Wales if unpaid and family labour is included. Now the reason we've
1:53.9	decided to focus this program on female farmers is there's a three-year study that's just been
1:59.4	announced by the University of Exeter and
	...

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