Harper Adams beef production work features on BBC's Farming Today

BBC Radio Four’s Farming Today is focussing on beef throughout this week – and visited our beef production unit to talk to Dr James McCaughern about its work.

@BBCFarmingToday tomorrow - we eat humble pie over beef figures - but also discuss @HarperAdamsUni low carbon beef and whether supermarkets will want it; and measuring carbon emissions from fenland soil @CLR_Cambridge and @FenlandSoil tell us what they’re doing pic.twitter.com/TdbWn3yeSQ

— Anna Hill (@HillFT) May 2, 2023

Dr McCaughern explained how the unit works to develop healthy, efficient and low-emission livestock, demonstrated some of the precision farming work which is being undertaken on cattle diets, and the importance of a localised approach to sustainability.

It’s Beef Week on @BBCFarmingToday!

I visited @HarperAdamsUni for tomorrow’s programme, talking about efficiency, health and carbon emissions in beef production with Dr James McCaughern from the Beef Grower Finisher Unit. @BBCRadio4 at 5:45am, or BBC Sounds any time after! pic.twitter.com/OJNOxDjfo2

— Theo Whyte (@TJAWhyte) May 2, 2023

He told reporter Theo Whyte: “When we talk about sustainability, to me s should be at a local area for that region – so in other words, sometimes as a human society it may suit us to have very intensive indoor systems, sometimes it may suit us to have embedded arable systems – sometimes, it may suit to have suckler cow systems for landscape management in various parts of the UK.

“I don’t think there is one answer to sustainability.”

Listen back to the piece on BBC Sounds here.