Farm bosses near Market Drayton are celebrating after edging closer to an enterprise award as part of a ceremony dubbed the ‘rural Oscars’.

Landowners and farmers from two carefully-selected areas are now able to apply for licences to trial new measures designed to tackle the devastating impact of bovine TB.

We all take for granted modern communications technology. Instant contact is now the norm until something goes wrong, like the early January storms dropping a tree through the telephone line in the middle of a field about a mile from us.

Recently debated and proposed reform of the Common Agricultural Policy has led to confusion around the ability of some farmers to be eligible for the new Direct Payment Scheme beyond December 31, 2013.

What has happened to the planning system recently?

‘Disappointing and a missed opportunity’ is how farming leaders in England have described the release of the European Commission’s extensively leaked Common Agriculture Policy Reform proposals.

BASIS and the Environment Agency have signed a landmark Memorandum of Understanding, formally recognising more than 30 years in which the two organisations have worked together to raise standards in the pesticide supply and advice sector.

The farming conference season is in full-flow and the end of January sees beef and dairy specialists gathering in Shropshire for the British Cattle Conference.

Delamere Dairy, the UK’s speciality dairy, has been named ‘Farm Business of the Year’ at the Farm Business Food & Farming Industry Awards. 

Rea Valley Tractors (RVT) will be opening its doors on Tuesday, February 7 for its annual Spring Open Day which will be held at the Seven Acres site in Sundorne, Shrewsbury.

A new agricultural machinery dealership has opened in Shropshire.

I was pleased to see that on December 1 Her Majesty’s government came up trumps for the first time ever and our Single Payment was credited to my bank account along with the upland hill farming organic allowance