The date's been set for a general election. Some would argue all the main political parties have been wooing the farming and rural vote for months now, Rishi Sunak was the first PM in 16 years to appear at the NFU conference this spring, Labour’s promising a rural crime strategy and the Lib Dems say they’d put an extra billion pounds into farming budgets....

New figures from the Office for National Statistics show a record number of people are not employed due to long term sickness. The Government's launching a new task force with the aim of getting people who are off work and on benefits, back on the payroll. The Prime Minister has suggested they could they be persuaded to get out into the fields to pick...

Changes to planning law will allow more freedom for farmers and landowners in England to convert unused buildings into new homes, or new businesses like farm shops. The relaxed rules make it possible to alter buildings to create up to 10 homes, without planning permission. In addition, the amount of floorspace that can be changed from agricultural to...

There's an update on the saga of illegal waste dumping at a protected woodland in Kent. The BBC has learnt that the Government is planning an emergency intervention to clear thousands of tonnes of rubbish. Locals say that as many as 30 lorries a day were illegally dumping rubbish at Hoads Wood near Ashford at the height of the problem last year. The...

Anna Hill reports from the second Farm to Fork Summit held this week in Downing Street. To coincide with the event, the Government released it's Food Security Index - which looks at how much of the food we eat is produced here, but also takes into account other things, like fertiliser prices, global trade and biosecurity risks. The Prime Minister said...

Helen Mark visits the Balmoral Show in Northern Ireland. In the week when the Northern Ireland Assembly has declared the country to be in an ecological and biodiversity crisis, Helen asks the new Minister for Agriculture, Andrew Muir, how he sees farming and the environment working together.Produced by Beatrice Fenton.