How would you like your chicken to be featured on the cover of 2012's British Free Range Egg Producers Association Calendar? As well as winning you five hundred pounds. And don't worry if your prize hen doesn't quite make it as 'Miss Chicken 2012' there are a further 12 places up for grabs for January through to December, along with £50 per place up for grabs. The calendar is sent out to all members of the association for free and is available to buy for none members on the official website. Anyone can enter, whether you own a chicken or not, simply send in an image of a free range hen or upload your image

The Non-Diet Cook Book by Krystle Nicole Russin is a cook book focusing on using fresh produce, locally sourced. Below is an interview with the author : Please give a little background on yourself and how you became involved in cooking? I enrolled in one year of cooking class during high school. Before then, I never cooked. I was afraid I would not be able to follow a recipe and am sure many others are the same and don’t cook for this reason. I became more interested in food after this class. My infatuation with food went from enjoying it to believing it made me feel better about my life in a s

The European Union currently imports around two billion pounds (sterling) of beef and thirty million pounds (sterling) of semen every year from America. Recent agricultural news reports state that animal cloning is widespread and unregulated in the United States and therefore imported meat and semen could be coming from first generation cloned animals. It has been stated in several farming news reports that European Members of Parliament want a complete ban on cattle meat and semen from American until it can be proven that the products have not come from cloned livestock. European farmers have to abide by toug

In May 2010 a Cumbrian judge handed out an unusually long prison sentence on Robert Mickle, who along with his accomplice, Christopher Steele, came especially from County Durham to a farm in Cumbria to steal a cattle truck. On passing the 16-month prison sentence on Mickle, Judge Paul Batty QC said he hoped to deter other such criminals by giving a long sentence and vowed to do what he could to stop Cumbria farms being targeted by criminals out to steal expensive farm machinery. On sentencing Mickle and Steele for the theft of a cattle lorry worth £6,000 the Judge said : "Farmers in Cumbria all too ofte

In early 2010 DEFRA launched the new Upland Support scheme for hill farmer's, which is to replace Hill Farm Allowance. The scheme will reward farmers for adopting and continuing to practice environmentally friendly farming. It is available to all farmers in Severely Disadvantaged Areas so long as they are not already in receipt of an ESA scheme or CSS Agreement. The Upland Support Scheme will pay farmers for conserving the habitats of wildlife, maintaining historic features and traditional characteristics like stone walls and meadows. Farmers will also be encouraged to breed traditional livestock and conserve

DEFRA recently published its annual figures of EU payments (direct aids, rural development payments and market schemes) and the number of UK farming businesses receiving over a million pounds in EU grants and subsidies has now increased to 29, from 16 last year. This has again led to renewed criticism of the system and how much tax-payers money goes to these 'rich' farmers and how the benefits are being given to few, large landowners and not to the smaller farmers, who are usually in more need of the funding. It is a vicious circle with the massive subsidies paid out to large landowners allowing them to expand

There has been a huge increase in the fines imposed on British farmers for flouting rules and regulations and breaching various support schemes. Farmers have faced heavy fines for minor mistakes such as filling in application forms wrong and there seems no clear distinction between a genuine error when trying to complete complicated application forms and attempts to fraud the system. English farmers were given penalties of just over one million pounds in 2008, but in 2009 this more than doubled to over two and half million pounds. Close to one and half thousand Welsh farmers saw penalties of more than two mill

As David Cameron settles into his new home at Number 10 Downing Street, the UK farming industry is waiting to see whether the Conservatives stick to their pre-election pledge to reduce the amount of rules and regulations placed on British farmers. The Tories have stated that they recognise the need for UK farmers to be able to compete in an open market and that they cannot do this with all the current rules and regulations passed down from Brussels. The Conservatives maintain that while standards must be maintained, it the outcome that is important and the methods of achieving the required results should be le

As cabinet ministers are appointed to the new coalition government, there is uncertainty about what the future solves for DEFRA and what the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition means for the UK farming industry. After long negotiations, Conservative MP Caroline Spelman, has been appointed as the new DEFRA Secretary. She is a former NFU adviser and with her husband, co-owns a food and biotechnology business. Mrs Spelman said she would work to increase food production, look at ways to adapt practices to climate change, protect the environment and promote sustainability. The Tories pledged before the elect

Food retailer, Marks & Spencers has announced a new scheme to reward dairy farmers, which supply the retailer store with fresh milk, for achieving and maintaining the highest levels of animal health and welfare. The scheme, known as the Milk Pledge Plus scheme, will be run in conjunction with the Bristol Vet School and Anderson's consultants who will inspect and monitor each farm taking part and supplying fresh milk to ensure that the dairy farms obtain the highest standards with continual improvement to animal health and welfare. All those dairy farms that supply milk to Marks & Spencers where consult