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The day after the IFPRI and the WRI released a major report saying the world's ability to feed itself is at risk from farming methods that have degraded soils, parched aquifers, polluted waters, and caused the loss of animal and plant species, thanks to Stokely for this wonderful winge:

"pro-environment, pro-vegetarian, anti-farmer ... If it continues down its present track, sounding increasingly like Greenpeace Meets the RSPB on an Organic Farm in Middle England, if it doesn't think long and hard about its tone, the nature of its stories and the information it provides, it will become increasingly irrelevant, and could find itself metamorphosing into Farming Yesterday."
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Has Farming Today really lost its way?
Western Morning News (Plymouth) February 5, 2001

Amid criticism of the BBC's flagship  agricultural programme, WMN Farming Editor CAROL TREWIN  condemns its 'pro-environment, pro-vegetarian, anti -farmer' bias 'Almost every farmer I talk to says it is irrelevant,  ill -informed or anti- farmer' LET me be totally honest.

 For three years I was the editor of Farming Today and for  the four preceding years I produced many of BBC radio's  farming programmes. So it would be easy to accuse me of  sour grapes if I join the growing chorus of criticism of  what was once Radio 4's flagship farming programme.

 However, almost every farmer I talk to, and many of their  leaders, tell me that they no longer listen to the  programme because it is irrelevant, ill- informed or  anti-farmer. As Devon farmer Richard Haddock said last  week, there is sometimes more farming information in The  Archers than in Farming Today. I should also admit that I  am among the famous radio soap opera's four million regular  listeners, and I believe that its farming content has  improved dramatically in the last couple of years. Leaving  aside the tone of its politics when Tony Blair addressed  the National Farmers' Union AGM last year, The Archers has  sensitively and accurately portrayed the farming crisis and  its impact on a rural community, even though the  agricultural editor, Graham Harvey, admitted recently that  he had been criticised by farmers for being too gloomy!  What The Archers delivers in dramatic form, Farming Today  should be matching with groundbreaking, authoritative news  stories. But I increasingly find myself agreeing with those  who see it as increasingly an anti -farmer programme  dominated by a handful of pressure groups with an overtly  anti-farming, pro-environment, pro-vegetarian agenda. Last  week it included a debate about whether sheep farming in  the hills is cruel (it was edited in such a way that  listeners with no prior knowledge of sheep farming would  have concluded that it is); but it did not mention the dairy farmers' blockades of Dairy Crest plants or Exeter  University's report on the cost of maintaining the  countryside. While I was editor I was frequently asked why  farmers should have a specialist programme of their own.

 Why was there not Mining Yesterday and You and Your Steel  Foundry to represent coal miners and steelworkers? Research  showed that only one in ten of the 600,000 listeners each  morning was connected with the farming industry. Mrs  Thatcher was a regular listener and wrote to congratulate  us on our 50th anniversary. The programme's approach was to  cover the most important farming stories, and give key  information, in a way that appealed to non-farming  listeners and offered them an insight into what was - for  many - another, unknown world. The daily litany of market  prices ended in the early 1990s - because the growth of  information technology provided a better information  service than a 15-minute radio programme. The point then  was that Farming Today was not a specifically pro-farming  programme. It was about the farming industry, but was not  partisan. It would criticise poor practices where criticism  was needed, and it would be honest about issues that  sometimes farmers and politicians would prefer not to be  aired. The programme's producers struggled for years to  persuade any of the BBC's news programmes to take the  threat of BSE seriously, as it emerged in mid 1980s.

 Farming Today and, incidentally, The Food Programme,  continued reporting the story almost unacknowledged, until  March, 1996, when suddenly every BBC radio and television  news programme wanted to know about this disease and who the experts were. Farming Today was the source of expertise, it  was authoritative, and farmers trusted it. Until the BSE  crisis, neither farming nor rural affairs had been high on  the political agenda, but in 1996 that changed forever.

 Five years on, the programme's biggest difficulty is that  it no longer has the farming and rural affairs news agenda  to itself. Major agricultural stories now appear on all the  flagship news programmes, like Today or the World at One.

 That might suggest that Farming Today had to alter its  agenda and become more sensational to survive. Across the  agriculture industry there is a deep feeling and  disappointment that the programme has lost its way, and  seems more intent on scoring cheap points with shock-horror  food scare stories than painting a picture of an industry  that is fighting its way through the worst recession in  living memory. If it continues down its present track,  sounding increasingly like Greenpeace Meets the RSPB on an  Organic Farm in Middle England, if it doesn't think long  and hard about its tone, the nature of its stories and the  information it provides, it will become increasingly  irrelevant, and could find itself metamorphosing into  Farming Yesterday. - WMN Farming Editor Carol Trewin  produced BBC Radio 4's farming programmes from 1990 to  1997. She edited Farming Today from 1994 to 1997.