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Farmers earn less than a penny a pack for much of the food they produce for supermarkets, according to a new report 'Unpicking Food'. The charity Sustain says it鈥檚 often less than one per cent. They say supply chains are too long and complex, resulting in producers losing out. For instance, the report says a 480 gram pack of supermarket cheddar costs a dairy farmer 拢1.48 to produce, yet he receives less than a penny of the 拢2.50 selling price.

One of the consequences of the bird flu outbreak has been a flurry of news stories about a shortage of turkeys for Christmas. 'Christmas Dinner at Risk!' warned headlines after the British Poultry Council predicted 'big big shortages', because around half of the free-range poultry grown for this year鈥檚 dinner plates has either died or been culled due to the disease. But the widespread publicity about shortages has had unintended and undesirable consequences for some small-scale turkey farmers. Paul White produces around 500 free-range turkeys near Burnley in Lancashire, but he says he's only sold 10 per cent of his birds, when normally he'd have sold half by now. He says customers are panicking about shortages and buying frozen turkeys in supermarkets.

Equine vet Emma Tomlinson runs a stud and an IVF clinic for horses in Gloucestershire, alongside a mobile equine vet service. On 150 acres of organic pasture - which was once her dad鈥檚 dairy farm - she's created an international business, collecting and storing semen from stallions, harvesting eggs and transplanting embryos in mares. It's a top-end service for top-end clients - show jumpers, polo ponies, eventers and dressage horses. She says when she started the business 20 years ago, she was the first commercial embryo transfer service in England.