Poke around at BBC's Open University

Allan Dubyts has an article in the upcoming October 9 Grainews on the benefits of high-speed Internet. One benefit I've been rather slow to discover is listening to radio podcasts from other countries. Today I listened for the first time to BBC's Farming Today radio show. Here is what I learned:

1. The UK is getting drenched with rain, with harvest held up for weeks. Kernels are starting to sprout. What's more, seeding, which follows right behind harvest for many crops, keeps getting pushed back. UK farmers are looking at a large, but low quality crop, which is bad news because there is "a very good world harvest of wheat" coming off. Milling wheat prices in the UK were 200 pounds (the currency) per tonne last year and have sunk to 150 pounds per tonne currently.

2. The EU commission has proposed regulations to restrict the pesticides that can be used on farms. One expert — Sean Rickard of Cranfield School of Management — interviewed says "what is maddest of all" is that while the world needs to increase output, Europe seems to be "hellbent" on lowering its output and productivity. If the regulations are imposed, Rickard says the results will be falling yields and rising cost of production, which means farmers will need a massive rise in farmgate prices to maintain margins.

I found Farming Today while poking around at BBC's Open University website. It's a wealth of current information on just about anything, and has links to every BBC program. I love it.