There was a useful article in the Guardian on January 28th, describing the loss of the UK’s meadows, the consequent damage to biodiversity, and what conservationists are trying to do about it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2021\/jan\/28\/flower-power-the-movement-to-bring-back-britains-beautiful-meadows?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Radio 4\u2019s book of the week this week is \u201cEnglish Pastoral\u201d by James Rebanks, which tells the story of a hill farm in the Lake District, how farming has changed over the past few generations, and how the current farmer there (the author) is trying to balance the need for food security with good stewardship of the land. If you\u2019d like to hear it but have missed it, thanks to the miracle of \u201cBBC Sounds\u201d you still can:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/m000rc46\/episodes\/player<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s a frequently quoted statistic than 98% of the UK\u2019s wildflower meadows have disappeared since 1945. Unlike many frequently quoted statistics, this one is accurate and evidence-based. But to understand why this has happened, it\u2019s necessary to also understand the changes in agriculture that have been driven by population growth, government policy, technology, and consumer demand. There was an excellent series on BBC4 called \u201cMud, Sweat and Tractors\u201d which used home movies from various farms to explain how things changed from the mid 1940\u2019s to the 21st<\/sup> century for dairy farming, fruit and veg production, wheat production, and beef farming. It shows how farmers were responding to what the government policies of the time were directing them to do. Unfortunately, this series is not currently available on BBC i-player: <\/p>\n\n\n\n https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/b00jzjf8\/episodes\/guide<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it is available on dvd if you search for it\u2026..<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There was a useful article in the Guardian on January 28th, describing the loss of the UK’s meadows, the consequent damage to biodiversity, and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-news","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/185.53.59.222\/~carmsmeadows\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/185.53.59.222\/~carmsmeadows\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/185.53.59.222\/~carmsmeadows\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/185.53.59.222\/~carmsmeadows\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/185.53.59.222\/~carmsmeadows\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/185.53.59.222\/~carmsmeadows\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/185.53.59.222\/~carmsmeadows\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/185.53.59.222\/~carmsmeadows\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/185.53.59.222\/~carmsmeadows\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}