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…"