Farming into the future

26:12And I've got two of the management here at this summer school with me. Hannah, do you want to just start by trying to explain what it's like to work at a summer school in the summer? Yeah, so working at a summer school is like living in a bubble for six weeks. and you have this microcosm of the wider world and people are from different countries, different life experiences and they all come together to just have a nice time and learn stuff. Each year, tens of thousands of students travel to the UK for a short stint to learn English or for pre-university academic courses. According to English UK, the trade association for English language teaching, the sector supports more than 40 ,000 jobs per year, the vast majority over the summer.

26:55Many of those jobs are taken by adults under the age of 24. Kaz Slater is a manager alongside Hannah. I think especially seasonal work is a huge opportunity to try something that you don't have to do full time throughout the year. For a lot of them, it's their first job or their second job. And it's a great chance to meet other people, to explore what options they may or may not have after this and to go into. And you meet so many people and you think, oh, actually, maybe I should go into doing something down that route, whereas you hadn't thought of that before. Cam is 21 and has worked at summer schools for the last few years.

27:30It is worrying when you see big statistics of people out of work and struggling to get it. It's hard with zero-hour contracts. Sometimes it's really beneficial, sometimes it's not and you don't get anything. Whereas here you get a full two-week, four-week, six-week contract. You know you've got the work, you know what's going to come in. In recent years, the summer school sector has faced difficulties. The number of students learning English in the UK declined 12 % year on year in the peak summer months of 2025. For many schools, fewer jobs have been on offer as a result. Jodie Gray is the CEO of English UK.

28:04It's a bit of a perfect storm, to be honest. The market is in decline. Obviously, the pandemic, terrible for us, terrible time. And I think one of our biggest problems is that at the same time as we had the pandemic, we also had the end of freedom of movement connected to Brexit. Other reasons, I mean, of course, at the moment, we have seen a drop-off caused by the war in the Middle East, the expense and the cost of flights, which is something that's been happening, not just because of the war in the Middle East, but recently to do with the cost of fuel. And there are different new destinations appearing, destinations in places like Dubai, in places like the Philippines, for example, in East Asia, which are cheaper destinations, they're closer to home.

28:39It's not only young people that are missing out due to a decline in the sector. It's the UK more broadly, too. You know, they come here thinking they might want to come to university, not necessarily in Cambridge, but maybe a university similar to Cambridge or even just a university anywhere in the UK. And they get the, you know, the idea of what it's like to live here on campus. And I think a lot of them do plan to come here or at least somewhere similar to here. Can I ask how much it costs a student to study here? Do you know? I think it's between anywhere between three and a half and five thousand pounds for the two week course.

29:10Here's Jodie Gray again. Those people are spending far more money than your average visitor. You know, each one of these students is contributing both directly into the sector, but also on all the other stuff they spend money on, whether it's in the shops or it's in the entertainment industry, whether it's all the tourist attractions that they visit. And then later on down the line, they may end up working in jobs of influence, whether it's in politics or in business. And they have this affinity with the UK because they have had this great experience in the UK as a child. And, you know, most language schools have incredible stories of like alumni who have come to them and then they have come on to be very influential figures as adults in their own careers.

29:47And so there is this impact that's felt down the line, both economically, but also in terms of soft power and influence. Despite the recent decline, Gray remains optimistic. The biggest market for English language teaching students in the world is Colombia. And our market share of the Colombian market is something around 4%. And of course, one of their biggest destinations used to be the US, but there are big problems in that market right now. We have an opportunity now to shift the dial in some of these really important markets. I have no doubt that we will be around having this conversation in a few decades' time and that we will be talking about a sector that is thriving.

30:23Whether it's the Saturday job in retail and hospitality or the summer job in education, young people often rely on this kind of work as a gateway to a permanent job. For teenagers around the UK, A-level results might be out the way, but the search for opportunities is only just beginning. Next year, I think I'll be back. Yeah, I'm going to travel. Personally, I'm going to travel for a year. I've just finished uni. So I'll be back next year. And then even longer term, working with young people as a potential career, teaching. Is that something that you discovered that you liked doing this? Yeah, yeah.

30:54I really like it here. Like, it doesn't feel like a job. Josh Corber-Hoffman there reporting for us in Cambridge. Let us know. 85058, if you've been on the hunt for a summer job this year, your kids have been on the hunt, have they managed to find one? How has it compared to previous years? Are some of those sectors that you would have been used to perhaps finding some seasonal work, providing it as much? Maybe there are new sectors popping up. Pop quiz. What's in your kid's lunchbox? At Whole Foods Market, they've already done the studying. Over 300 food ingredients are banned from their shelves.

31:30no hydrogenated fats in the peanut butter, and no high fructose corn syrup in the cookies. And for sandwiches, there are no synthetic nitrates or nitrites in any of their deli meat. So you can pack lunchboxes with peace of mind. Get back to school ready at Whole Foods Market. Wake Up To Money with Sean Farrington. Good morning to you. Wake Up To Money on BBC Five Live, nearly 20 to 6. We're going to talk about some of the impacts of the weather now. We're on to a potentially new phase of the extreme weather that we've been experiencing. Wet weather forecast for parts of the UK following that summer of record-breaking heatwaves and widespread drought.

32:14And although heavy showers expected for many, the places across England and Wales most in need of it may not see much of it in the coming days, but we are starting to get some of those increased risks of flash flooding to the UK as well. Big thanks to Stuart, who's been in it. Stuart in Canterbury this morning. It might seem like a random comment, but if anyone has a garden or green space at home, they can help drainage by simply going round the garden, piercing the ground with a garden fork. This will help the water soak away rather than sitting in the ground. Not random, Stuart. Those tips, anything that might give people a hint of what might help in the days, weeks, months to come as the weather changes again for them.

32:56Always very useful. Do let me know your thoughts, 85058. If you're prepped for the end of the heat waves, a summer of drought that might be followed by something a little different, you may still be experiencing that drought, of course, as not everybody will get the rain they need. Who would be a British farmer this summer as well, from severe drought and wildfires to ever-increasing cost of things like fertiliser? Yesterday, Will caught up with Svein Torholtzeter, who's the chief executive of Yara International, one of the world's biggest fertilizer producers, about that situation facing farmers.

33:32Climate change is making weather patterns even more unpredictable and appears now intense heat. It's more drought stress in several regions. And now with geopolitics adding another layer of complexity on top of that, it makes it even more challenging for the farmers. At the moment, fertilizer prices have come down from their peaks early in the year, but a lot of damage has already been done here. So how can farmers adapt to all of this? We've got Dr. Ruth Mann with us, who's head of Integrated Crop Technologies for Agri, which is an agronomy company specializing in applying the latest technology to UK farming.

34:08Dr. Mann, very good morning. Good morning. Thank you for your time. Just, you know, when you hear a brief upsum as that was of the issues that farmers have faced this summer, what would you say is the sort of key technology that you've been looking at that has had the biggest impact so far this year? I think there isn't really one technology that's had a major impact. It's a combination of lots of different technologies. Been a really difficult couple of years within agriculture, the high input prices. is we really need to look at every opportunity to enhance the return on investment for growers.

34:47So we've been looking at the concept of a smart connected farm where we bring together lots of these technologies like satellite imagery, drones, sensors, soil sampling to really help farmers and agronomists use those technologies to get the very best out of every ounce of every input when they're growing any crop. Could you give us a bit of an example if we're imagining a year like this year, either whether it might be to do with fertilisers and the cost rocketing and sometimes questions over longer-term supply, or it might be a drought that the farms will have faced. Is there some sort of setup?

35:27Just so we can all picture that farm, how might your technology be implemented on that farm? What would we see and experience? So over the last three years, we've been testing various different technologies on farms. And one of the methods that we use is we will split a field almost in half and half of the field will have the farm input as standard agreed with the farmer and the agronomist. And the other half of the field will have the input enhanced by technology. So a good example is a farm in Rearsby we've been working with for a number of years. and last year we split the field and we used some software attached to a drone that was looking at monitoring the crop over the season, monitoring its growth and we were able to reduce the amount of nitrogen spent by 15 % as a result of monitoring that growth and by using disease modelling and spore detection we were able to tailor the plant protection product inputs which meant we resulted in a yield increase of 0.8 tonnes per hectare and delivered an increase in gross margin of£137 per hectare over and above the farm standard.

36:40Now, those numbers sound big and good. I mean, I'm guessing they are. How drastic a change is that? It's a major improvement. And the technology itself, although it costs a little bit more to input the technology that includes the cost of the technology so everything's in there so you're increasing that return on investment just over and above what you're already doing and it isn't anything drastic this is just bringing together data most of which is already available but using different methods like ai to turn it into bite-sized pieces for the agronomist and the grower to really understand and benefit from so even when there's a case there you know that example you've given where even taking into account the investment needed for the technology, it can improve the productivity of the farm.

37:33Do you see farmers having access to that cash to begin with to be able to take advantage of it? Is that there at the moment? Well, most of this data is already there. It's just bringing it together. I'm just literally thinking of the ability. let's assume it works on somebody's farm and is going to work do they have the ability financially to take whether it's the cash they have in the business a borrowing they're able to get or investment they're able to get from somewhere else are farms in the UK set up to be able to take advantage of this kind of stuff as much as they ought to be? It'll depend on each individual farm some of the farms this will be absolutely normal and day-to-day running costs for the business.

38:25For other farms, it may be a bit of an investment at the minute. And when they're looking at every area that they choose to spend their money in, if they can make more of a return from that spend, then it's worth that investment and looking at. And we've lots of research to show that you can achieve that return on investment. It is that cash flow side of things at the minute. And lots of companies like Agri will help farmers look at that cash flow and how they're going to achieve their margins with whatever crop they're going to grow this year. But so, I mean, does it feel to you like the farming sector in the UK has that cash available to them if they want to invest it overall when you look at the state of the sector?

39:15and the the returns from the last couple of years will make it more difficult but to take there will be crop going into the ground going forward there always will be and we've got a really good farming sector in the UK that has proven to be resilient over a number of years and always finds a way forward but it will be looking at exactly where spend will be on the inputs over the course of growth of the crop this year. Very interesting. Dr. Boothman, thank you for your time this morning. 85058, we know we have plenty of farmers tuning in to wake up to money each morning as we discuss these topics.

39:53Let us know, have you actually invested in some technology in recent years and you literally see the kind of case being made there by Ruth? Are you able, do you see this technology there and you're not able to find the cash for it? What is the state of play? Is it different for different types of farming around the UK, different places around the UK as well. Let us know your thoughts there. That was Dr Ruth Mann from Agri. It's 13 minutes to six now. Let's talk about this Prime Minister game. I don't mean what Andy Burnham is deciding to do every single day, but how well do you think you would do as Prime Minister?

40:32Would you be able to last long term? Would you be able to last longer than many Prime Ministers have in the UK of late? Or would you be hearing this?

40:45It's like a slightly younger version of what we hear in the Houses of Parliament every Wednesday, isn't it? That was the sound effect from a new mobile game called Number 10, Full Confidence, where you play as the Prime Minister, which is, as of last night, topping the paid games rankings on both the UK versions of the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. We've got Ben Brewis with us from Sleepy Boy Studios based in Manchester behind this game. Ben, very good morning. Good morning. And congratulations still. Is this a little bit out of the blue? Does it feel like congratulations are in order?

41:21Thank you. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. Where did it all come from then? It was around the time last year in December, just when it felt like the tide was turning again on Kia Stormer. and there was more rumours of regurgistic nations coming in and potentially in the new year. And I thought, if this is going to be the seventh, I think, prime minister in the next few years, our people find it a bit silly and ridiculous. I thought, why not make a game out of it? Now, you know, some people might think there's that famous sort of gif that's gone around when one of our colleagues asked a lady, and I think it was near Bristol a good few years ago, when she told her that there was going to be another election, and her response was, oh, not another one.

42:04So you sort of might think people are sick of hearing about all this stuff, but then a game like this gets to the top of the charts. What's the difference? I know. I think satire is what cuts through as well. People love the likes of, say, The Thick of It, or Have I Got News for You, and programmes like that, or even Veep on the US side, where people just absolutely rinse politics, and it just spirals from there. And I think that's where people find their actual appeal of things, don't they? Can you give us a bit of an example of the kind of decision, the consequences that might occur in your game?

42:38Because every day on this show, making news headlines every day, is some decision either about defence spending or who's going to be the Chancellor or what are we going to say ahead of the next election. So what's coming across in your game? Yeah, I try to keep it topical as much as possible, but also put a twist on it. So there's ridiculous ones from back in the school days. Everyone had an experience where a dog ran onto the schoolyard and pens were down and everything stopped. I have the same thing happen in the Lords and you end up with peers trying to catch it in order to double their attendance pay.

43:16You have stuff like the Defence Department contracting so many hundred robots from a foreign country and they turn out to be dancing robots, which we've seen appear in the news recently. Stuff like that. Right. And so is it at this point a lot more humorous than it is, you know, big decisions about, you know, whether you make a decision like, oh, we're not going to let pensioners have the increase in the state pension that they've had in recent years. You know, some of the real controversial big topics of how are we going to pay for or sort out our social care? Are there some of those in there as well?

43:56Or do you have to keep it light to keep people entertained? mind i think just keeping it light to keep people entertained there are elements of um topics that i touch on but again i try to keep it light and try and keep it not based on one party either to like think of it more as a collective of party when you're in power right just explain that a bit more so when in power makes it a bit more difficult for the user if they think oh an option might go either way because you're not sure if it's a center center left center right party that you're dealing with as your prime minister playing because the premise is your prime minister and you have to keep all of your four factions such as the cabinet backbenchers media and public happy and as soon as one drops out you're out you have to start a new go on the game right and do you see your sort of the progress along the way so you make one decision and it might make somebody happy but actually you see that the cabinet becomes a lot less happy and and you know they're closer to having lacking confidence in you.

44:55Exactly. And it does mimic real life in that way. So if you want to give a lot of funding on one particular scenario to the NHS, your backbenchers are going to love you, but the rest of the cabinet might be a bit annoyed that all the money's going to the health department. Well, look, we've had Harvey Elliott with us over the course of the show today, founder and chief executive of the independent video game publisher PlayStack. So we've been having a good bit of gaming chat one way or another, whether it's about Grand Theft Auto or about games like this, Ben, already. Harvey, you've obviously experienced the game a little bit yourself.

45:28And when you hear Ben explain what it's really all about, what does it tell you about what's needed if you want to get a game capturing the imagination of people a little bit out of the blue and against the big guns? Well, what Ben's done is taken a real-world situation, but he's made sure it's fun. And he's created an experience that actually doesn't give you easy choices and I think you just described that really well for us Ben but he gives you you know almost ridiculous choices that are probably fairly similar to what you might see in government with a real tone of satire, humour and entertainment and consequence when you make perhaps what you thought was the right decision turns out to be the wrong decision so putting that together and putting in the hands of people does give a little glimpse into what government might be like.

46:12And so Ben let's talk a little bit about you know the success of the game away from the content but just merely the fact you know sleepy boy studios how big is the business there and and what is what is your sort of day-to-day aim at the business yeah so it is still a side project like many developers in the uk and in other countries have full-time jobs working on again development but usually have a limited company set up just to work on your passion projects really because a lot of developers do it because they enjoy it just like me I spend a lot of my spare time on weekends being a bit nerdy and always coding, thinking of some new game or app to make.

46:52But the skill of it's just been amazing. To begin with, it was an Apple feature that actually got it appearing in the app store, which was amazing as well that they picked it up. So when you say an Apple feature, if others are thinking, hang on, like, you know, I've got a good idea here. I've been coding all weekend, all year and got something, but it hasn't quite taken off. What was it that got eyeballs onto your game first exactly? So for developers, you have like a portal where you can submit all of your apps at a time and there's usually a nomination section. I think it's available to everyone and there's no harm in just sending off a nomination form to say, hi, look at my app to Apple.

47:34It's a big update or it's a new app or there's a big feature coming soon and you usually send it about a month in advance. and if they like what they see in the update on the new app, they'll get back in touch and ask for more artwork and then hopefully you'll see it in the store so it's more prominent, more visibility for people to download it. And I think that's what really gets the numbers up for games and new apps. And then what has happened for you to get to the top of the charts in recent days? So on Sunday I had an amazing article brought up by a journalist called Laura Cress at the BBC and she wrote about the app and how these type of games were becoming more popular in terms of politics and trying to figure out why people are so interested in politics in a humorous way rather than just the mundanity of each day that comes with it.

48:28And how much of a difference then when you have that kind of cut through does that make? How many downloads are we talking here and what would you have ever been aiming for? I mean, it has passed completely what I was expecting. I think as of yesterday, Apple are a bit slow with updating you with analytics and stuff, but there was around 30-odd thousand downloads with the major, most of the bump from yesterday. So it's quite a big boost from the 300, 400 I was seeing every day before then. And financially, do you actually get to see the benefits of a boost like this? Yeah, so Apple will take a cut.

49:11If you make under a million, if you're a small business such as this app or other small apps that you'll see on the App Store, I'm guessing the bigger ones such as Minecraft Angry Birds who are the big worldwide brands in the 30 % rate for Apple, but otherwise it's 15 % that comes off and then all your VAT, but that's all handled again by Apple, which is handy. So 20%, I believe, in the UK and then all the other stores are worked out. But yeah, it's usually my apps,$2.99 on the App Store and Google Play. So that and then take away about 35%. So Harvey, we've heard a few stars align there for Ben.

49:47Is there an environment in the UK where those who have their side projects, you know, the independent studios themselves who might have a bigger project that they're looking to break through with, are they able to do that as often as they should? Not really, no, is the honest answer. We've got something like 18 ,000 releases on Steam, which is the PC marketplace. Probably similar numbers, if not more, on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store, as Ben's been reaching into. Yeah, we're looking through a little window into that store. So the featuring that Ben spoke of would be a great way to get his game first discovered and played, but it's not available or accessible for everyone because ultimately you're limited by screen space that you can get content into.

50:32It's the job of publishers like mine to help find a voice and find an audience for users, but it will require marketing and push to try and find communities of players who might be engaged in a game, get them excited about it. And Rachel Winter is with us this morning from Killik & Co. We'll often talk about Netflix's desire for our eyeballs. We've been talking a bit earlier about Meta and Instagram and Facebook and what might happen next. Is gaming becoming an increasing threat? We know it's a huge, huge industry. An increasing threat to those other sectors? I think it is to some extent. And I think I've read many things about how it's very good value for consumers.

51:11So if you imagine if you spend£20 on a film, for example, you might watch it once or twice, that's four hours of your time. If you spend money on a game, maybe that's£70 to£100. And that could take hours and hours and days of your life of you being entertained. So I think the consensus is that yes, it is good value. And perhaps more money could be spent on advertising via those games. Well, Rachel, Harvey, thank you for being with us this morning. Ben, 20 seconds. Any Chancellor financial games coming up that Wake Up To Money listeners might be intrigued with any time soon? I am, Andy, and spending reviews into the game, which will be a bit more fleshed out.

51:46Ben Brew is there from Sleepy Boy Studios. Thank you for all your messages. That is it from Wake Up To Money. Wake Up To Money from BBC Five Live. That's it from Wake Up To Money. You can download the podcast every Monday to Friday, so please make sure you subscribe. We'd also love it if you left us a review when you do. Get in touch. Keep the conversation going any time as well on social media. Use the hashtag WakeUpToMoney. BBC Radio 5 Live. Patrick Kilty. Stumble in your way into Saturday mornings with great guests. Good morning, Jimmy Nesbitt. Good morning, Apati. You're terrible. Kids taking down commentators.

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