31/12/22 - 100 Years of Farm Broadcasting

‘Farming Today’ and ‘On Your Farm’ are a long-established, well-loved part of the Radio 4 schedule. But how did agriculture on the air begin? A century ago radio was the wonder of the age with the newly-formed BBC offering an astounded public a nightly menu of news bulletins, chamber music and children’s stories. Farming broadcasts soon followed and were keeping listeners in touch with rural life long before the first radio drama, sports commentary or record programme had crackled in to the ether. In the century since, the strictly-scripted agricultural studio talk of the 1920s and ‘30s has evolved beyond recognition, and along the way brought fame and fan mail to the most unlikely of ‘stars’; a university farm manager, a Times newspaper correspondent and a Surrey horticulturalist. We look back at a hundred years of rural broadcasting, and the programmes that have been made for – and about – farmers. As we delve in to the archives, we’ll find out what’s changed over the last ten decades; what in the past is surprisingly familiar to us now; and discover how we’ve arrived where we are today.

Presented by Charlotte Smith
Produced by Vernon Harwood

Picture: The BBC's head of agricultural programmes, John Green, at home on his Cotswold farm on 17th March 1945.

Interviewed guest: Jeannie Hamilton
Interviewed guest: Jim Heffer
Interviewed guest: Tom Hercock
Interviewed guest: Robin Hicks
Interviewed guest: Anna Hill
Interviewed guest: Felicity Peake
Interviewed guest: Rebecca Pow MP
Interviewed guest: Robert Seatter
Interviewed guest: Richard Willmott
Interviewed guest: Robert Young

Reader: David Wethey

Archive material used in this programme:
The End of Savoy Hill; National Programme, 14/05/1932
6BM Calling; BBC Radio 3, 31/03/2004
Today in the South & West; West of England Home Service, 18/11/1964
Auntie, Uncle and Mr Mike; BBC Radio 4, 01/01/1974
The Farming Week – 60th Anniversary Special; BBC Radio 4, 25/03/1989
Farming Today – Robin Hicks; BBC Radio 4, 25/05/1972
Dig for Victory – R.S. Hudson; BBC Home Service, 10/09/1940
In Your Garden – C.H. Middleton; BBC Home Service, 03/12/1944
Radio Allotment; BBC Home Service, 18/04/1942
Post War Careers – Irene Hilton; BBC Home Service, 07/06/1945
Farming Today – Hill flocks; BBC Home Service, 10/02/1944
Farming Today – Cattle at the Crossroads; BBC Home Service 11/11/1943
Farming Today – Pig farming; BBC Home Service, 09/03/1944
On Your Farm; BBC Radio 4, 29/01/1983
The Oral History of the BBC; John Green video interview, 19/11/1992
The Oral History of the BBC; John Green audio interview, 01/09/1989
The Farming Week – CLA Game Fair; BBC Radio 4, 01/08/1987
Pick of the Year; BBC Radio 4, 29/12/1989
Royal Welsh Show; BBC Wales, 21/07/1987
Plague ’67; BBC Radio 4, 06/12/1967
Six o’clock News; BBC Radio 4, 19/02/2001
Farming Today – EU referendum result; BBC Radio 4, 24/06/2016
Asian Club – Richard Dimbleby; BBC General Overseas Service, 27/04/1964