This Farming Life episode 7: It’s late summer in Bute, and Emma and Ewan preparing for the Bute Agricultural Show, the highlight of the island’s agricultural calendar. Later, after a health scare with top sheepdog Joffe, Emma and Ewan compete at the Scottish National Sheepdog Trials in Thurso. Meanwhile, in Stranraer, Kayleigh pushes ahead with plans for the new dairy business. After weeks without rain, the grazing fields are stripped dry, and the family are forced to dip into their winter silage to feed the herd.
In Fife, Mike makes a snap decision to travel to Northern Ireland in search of a new pedigree Suffolk tup. He has heard that Northern Irish sellers aren’t making the trip to the Scottish sales this year due to complications with Brexit. When he comes away empty-handed, the pressure is on to buy a tup back in Scotland – but prices are rocketing and the competition is fierce.
Documentary series following the struggles and triumphs of very different farming families in beautiful and remote landscapes. Filmed across a year, this series follows six families in remote and stunning Scotland. It’s early spring as the farmers gear up for lambing, their busiest weeks of the year. In Northumberland, Emma and Ewan are rounding up their cattle and sheep as they prepare to move from Emma’s home for the last ten years to a farm seven times the size, on the Isle of Bute just off Scotland’s west coast. The move means taking on huge financial risk, and when they finally arrive on Bute, the scale of the challenge that lies ahead begins to sink in.
This Farming Life episode 7
Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to live in cities. The history of agriculture began thousands of years ago. After gathering wild grains beginning at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers began to plant them around 11,500 years ago. Pigs, sheep, goats, and cattle were domesticated over 10,000 years ago. Plants were independently cultivated in at least 11 regions of the world. Industrial agriculture based on large-scale monoculture in the twentieth century came to dominate agricultural output, though about 2 billion people still depended on subsistence agriculture.
The major agricultural products can be broadly grouped into foods, fibers, fuels, and raw materials (such as rubber). Food classes include cereals (grains), vegetables, fruits, oils, meat, milk, eggs, and fungi. Over one-third of the world’s workers are employed in agriculture, second only to the service sector, although in recent decades, the global trend of a decreasing number of agricultural workers continues, especially in developing countries, where smallholding is being overtaken by industrial agriculture and mechanization that brings an enormous crop yield increase.
Modern agronomy, plant breeding, agrochemicals such as pesticides and fertilizers, and technological developments have sharply increased crop yields, but cause ecological and environmental damage. Selective breeding and modern practices in animal husbandry have similarly increased the output of meat but have raised concerns about animal welfare and environmental damage. Environmental issues include contributions to global warming, depletion of aquifers, deforestation, antibiotic resistance, and other agricultural pollution. Agriculture is both a cause of and sensitive to environmental degradation, such as biodiversity loss, desertification, soil degradation, and global warming, all of which can cause decreases in crop yield. Genetically modified organisms are widely used, although some are banned in certain countries.
