Ten reasons why Farming Today is show of the year

My programme of the year, no question: Farming Today, Radio 4, 5.45-6am Monday-Saturday. 10 reasons why:

(1) It does not, as some believe, paint a picture of 'country folk' lost in a buttery, prelapsarian idyll. Farming Today is more like something from the Brothers Grimm, and by rights should go out at midnight. "It gives me a reason to go back into the woods again," said one farmer this week, about collecting dead soft wood to burn now he hasn't any money for oil (or any money for anything). "For most of my life the woods were to be avoided like the plague…" He didn't say why. The comment just hung there, sinister. "England has been very bad at managing its woodland…" he said after a while, and added "… well, for the past few centuries…" as though they had passed in a frail sleep.  

(2) Its mostly about sheep. The Devon Closewool. The Roughfell and the Herdwick. The Whiteface, the Northderry, and the Shorthorn. "We're putting that blue-faced Leicester ram onto that horned ewe to get a mule that will compete with any other," said a farmer on Exmoor. "A mule is a big, leggier sheep isn't it?" checked the reporter, "perfect for taking down into the vale and producing a fat lamb?" "Yes." "Is it hardy?" "Oh yes. They've got a good thick skin and they just throw the water off them." "Did Foot and Mouth ever touch them?" "Well, it was literally just on the other side of that hill that it got as far up as." An extremely tense pause. "And now there's Blue Tongue to worry about too…" Couldn't you just listen to this kind of stuff for hours? (And incidentally, I'm up this early listening to the radio because I am a chronic insomniac who actively welcomes depression as a relief from anxiety. Farming Today makes life worth living!) 

In its mere 15 minutes, the haggard chaos of the entire world is revealed

(3) It's also about cows. "Look at this cow here. Sloping rump and narrow funny horns. People say 'that's not what I recognise as an animal, it looks so old, like 1,000 years old even,' but this is what cattle look like on their own steam. Feral. This lot started in Scotland and then went to Wales, and now they live in Leeds." In these sweetest of moments the existence of evil seems to have entirely slipped the programme's mind, and yet:

(4) Farming Today is actually about the disgrace of human stupidity and the far edge of innocence. In its mere 15 minutes, the haggard chaos of the entire world is revealed. A world where miniature Dartmoor foals are smuggled alive in crates to Italian butchers, and red agricultural diesel is sold out of Northern Ireland on the black market, having been passed through cat litter to remove the dye, the waste dumped ruinously into rivers and lakes, like the toxic run-off from the makeshift cocaine laboratories in Columbian jungles. There are mornings, listening, when my heart is in my mouth. Death is everywhere, sniffing. "This horse can't be sold," sorrowed a horse trader, yesterday. "So it's a case of calling the hunt kennels. Yes. Yes [his voice now clipped and bitter], the slaughterman…" 

(5) What an insane country we live in. Did you know that British horses have passports? And that instead of a photograph of the horse they have a drawn silhouette, rendered by a specialist artist, like the cameos swapped by lovers in a Jane Austen! 

(6) Occasionally the show turns properly obsessive and strange. Last week they decided to trace the source of the chicken in a Tesco Tikka Massala labelled 'UK' and nothing was going to stop them. It went on for literally days. "Well, there I was, put on hold," said a reporter, "and made to listen to music for 10 minutes, and the customer services rep eventually told me that the chicken could have come from anywhere in the UK or the EU, and so I said are you absolutely sure that it was the EU and not further afield and she went away again and then came back and admitted the chicken had come from Thailand." Later in the programme they went into some guy's house in Birmingham to rummage through his bins looking for any discarded 'ugly' vegetables in the hope of giving him a dressing down, but he turned out to be a model of recycling, someone who "does a roast and then the next day makes sandwiches and then a stock from the carcass" so they left him in peace. "Tomorrow we find out how frozen chicken can be labelled fresh as long as its been defrosted! You couldn't make it up!" marvelled presenter Charlotte Smith on Tuesday. There's nothing the show loves more than taking on the agents of waste, the haters of the wild. Either you're for life or against it. Period.

Very short shrift is given to people in authority, including lazy-arsed academics

(7) More than any other programme on Radio 4, FT's stories are entirely gleaned from its listeners, ie farmers, their neighbours, local rustic insomniacs, so it really is like a missive from the front. The show's following is particularly passionate, the emails firing in thick and fast, frequently disdainful and violently grievous ("Bernie in Bromley says 'tell Mr McLoud in Devon to buy some British chicken and a jar of one of the excellent curry sauces available and make his own'…")

(8) It can be slyly critical, adding up to an unbeatable portrait of the ploddingness of power. The other week they went to Borough market to listen to Michael Jack, chairman of the Environment Food and Rural Affairs Committee giving a speech. "Welcome this morning to the board room of Borough market. From where I am sitting there is a notice on the wall that reminds me that this is an ancient market that…" and they just faded him out to a low drone ("Borough is a very expensive place to buy food," sniffed Charlotte). As a rule, on FT, very short shrift is given to people in authority, including lazy-arsed academics. "What we're trying to do is build a geographical dimension into the definition of endangerment which has been focused on the numerical levels of particular animals…" started a lecturer from the University of Worcester last week, and they faded him out too.

Every other show seems lank and unloveable, the equivalent of greasy hair

(9) Their roving reporter is actually called Sarah Swaddling.

(10) Once you really get into it, there's no going back. Now every other show seems so lank and unloveable, the aural equivalent of greasy hair. I demand radio that advises on how to increase my output of barley! I demand radio that devotes itself as much to the activities of the spirit as the hands. So, now I'm a devoted listener to On Your Farm too, which goes out at dawn on Sundays (how much are you envying my boyfriend right now, people?) ·