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BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hello

1:27

and welcome to the Farming Today podcast

1:29

with me Charlotte Smith. In this episode,

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new mares for the English countryside and

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calls for more investment in rural areas.

1:36

There has been underfunding in rural

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areas of rural services,

1:41

infrastructure, support for local

1:44

businesses. So we

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really need the government to say how can

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we make rural areas prosperous.

1:51

More on that later. Let's start though with our

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topic this week, wild birds. And

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a bird which actually died out in the UK 600 years

1:58

ago. Stalks

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were reintroduced in 2016 with a

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group of injured, flightless birds brought

2:05

over from Poland. Four

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years ago they started producing chicks at

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their new home on the Nepestate in

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Sussex. Well this year there are 40 stalks

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at the Rewilding Project and more have

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flown in from abroad. Sean Killick from

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BBC South today joined them and met

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up with project officer Laura Vaughan Hirsch

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who explained that initially they had to

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build the stalks nests on the ground.

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It took until last year for those

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non-flying birds to actually start to breed

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and we were thrilled with the success.

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We had three chicks across two ground

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nests last year and this year they're

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gaining confidence and they've started breeding even

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more. On this nest we've got four

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chicks which are just 45 days

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old today and behind them we've got a

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couple more nests in the woodlands here. These

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non-flying injured ground nesters have

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acted as a magnet attracting

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migratory white stalks who've now

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joined them here and begun

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breeding too. Every year there

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are reports of stalks flying across the channel

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looking up and down particularly the south coast

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but they won't go anywhere unless they can

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see other stalks or at least evidence of

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stalk nests. They're very very social birds so

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it's taken this long for us to start

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being joined by these migratory returns which is

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thrilling. So

3:19

they're these colonial nesters so there's actually four

3:22

in this tree here. They can be easily

3:24

two meters wide potentially three meters deep they

3:27

kind of get bigger the adults will return

3:29

back to the same nest year after year

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and they will build on it but they

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can be enormous structures weighing up to a

3:35

ton in places but what we need to

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start thinking about is the invertebrates the beetles

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the flies that actually live within their nests

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and those nests have been missing from our

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landscape for over 600 years so you get

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different birds nesting within the bottom of a

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stalk nest, you get house and tree sparrows,

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even parakeets, different finches in some areas. The

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best bit is getting reports from across the

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county and beyond of people seeing stalks in

3:58

different environments it's really lovely. We hope that

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they will spread out if you're kind of

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looking at the sky towards August. That's when

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they go off to migrate typically at the

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end of August. So they are exploring along

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the south coast. They then go off and

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migrate and return in February, March time. We

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might very well start seeing stalks nesting away

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from this site and in different habitats and

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potentially like we see across the continent, even

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on buildings one day, perhaps. Laura

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Vaughan Hirsch there and her stalks at the

4:25

Neppist State. Now a

4:27

working Somerset farm which welcomes homeless

4:29

people. Rural homelessness is often

4:31

a hidden problem and it can be

4:33

difficult to find help and support. Well

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Manner Farm has turned an old dairy

4:38

house into a hostel and offers a

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chance to learn rural skills. Marie Lennon

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met farmer Rob Addicott. I

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come from a legacy of a family who've always

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wanted to care for people as

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well as the countryside. So

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I remember that about my grandparents as

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they would often have someone in their house who they were

4:57

looking after. We have a

4:59

Christian faith that certainly has a

5:02

drive to look after people

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as well as the environment

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and we forget that in the past

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farms were very much a centre for

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people to come and

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be connected to the countryside, connected to

5:15

something bigger than themselves. What's

5:25

going on here? Every

5:28

Tuesday and Friday we have something called Land

5:30

Day where a group of volunteers and some

5:33

of the residents of the dairy house come

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and they engage in gardening. So

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I'm Rachel Keogh, I'm the head

5:42

gardener here at Rekonnections. The

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residents come around on a Tuesday and

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a Friday and we garden and

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it starts off often with people

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desperately not wanting to garden. You've got

5:54

to try to win them over. Absolutely.

5:58

But once you start getting the success. is. It

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just changes. People change and

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sometimes it takes weeks,

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sometimes it takes months but

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just the act of having your hands in the soil

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it can be

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really beneficial on so many levels.

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Sharni is one of the newer residents

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here. Her life has been changed by

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what happens on this Somerset farm. Without

6:31

this place I probably would still be on the

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drugs and still using and still

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well in pretty bad shape to be fair. I

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was at Rob Bottom, I've been

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working on the drugs, I've

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been working on myself like

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being out here it's different to being in

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a town so I'm originally from Yeoville. It

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sounds like you were in a really really difficult

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place. What had led to that and

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what was your life like? In 2003 my

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brother hung himself that's where

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my life went down that's where the drugs

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all came in. I was only 11 at

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the time and then I started drinking and

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yeah life didn't get

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any better. I've lost a lot

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of people I love, I had a

7:14

child then I postnatal depression. Life

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hasn't been easy but this

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is the first time in 20 years I've

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actually been completely sober off everything.

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I've completely just changed my

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life around here. There

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are facilities and rehabilitation facilities

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all over the place especially in

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city centres. Why does

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it make sense for you to be here?

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What does it mean for you to be

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doing your recovery in this setting? This

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place has saved me. You can

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just see for yourself why getting clean here

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is so easy. I wake up every

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day and I look out my window and this is what I get to

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see. I

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was picking up weeds the other day

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and I found a little hair. It's

7:57

so nice that the wildlife... Cornwall

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in what it's calling a

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devolution revolution. The mayors

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will have control over transport, housing, skills

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and investment into their areas but

12:09

deals to create mayors in Norfolk and

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Suffolk agreed with the last government won't

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go ahead. I spoke to

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Matthew Freight from the Institute for Government

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who's co-authored a new report on how

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to extend devolution to the whole of

12:21

England. The deals that have just been

12:23

agreed in Holland East Yorkshire and greater

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Lincolnshire establish what's known as a combined authority.

12:28

It brings together the councils in an area

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and then an elected mayor who sits on

12:33

a board and they make collective decisions. The

12:36

deals in Norfolk and Suffolk are

12:38

slightly different. That had a directly

12:40

elected leader within an already existing

12:43

government system so it would have meant that they would have

12:45

needed to handle both the

12:48

management of the children's

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social care, adult social care and

12:52

other service provision alongside strategic planning

12:54

for growth. Let's

12:57

look at then Lincolnshire, a very rural county,

12:59

very important for farming. How will a mayor

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work and what difference honestly will it make?

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One of the major differences that

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a mayor will create is the

13:08

ability to get a greater level

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of spatial and strategic thinking across

13:13

the different councils in the area.

13:15

Mayors get a certain amount of

13:17

powers and they have

13:19

particular control over round

13:21

hood regeneration, skill strategies

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and are able to invest in things like digital

13:26

connectivity but they also attract a bit of money

13:28

too. They get a small

13:30

investment fund. They also get

13:33

a devolution of different funding pots from

13:35

Whitehall and that allows for local leaders

13:37

to take decisions that are better targeted

13:39

to local problems. We've

13:41

just heard about a report from a coalition

13:44

of rural groups in England which is

13:46

calling for far more investment in rural

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areas to unlock their potential. Is

13:51

that actually something a mayor helps with

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because you do already of course have

13:55

councils and county councils? A

13:58

mayor can do by having a single figure.