About Michael Blanche

Michael is a first-generation farmer on a tenanted farm in Perthshire, Scotland where he minces around with 750 sheep and 130 Angus Cows. He proudly does not own a tractor but this is really cheating because the cows are half owned by a person that does. He is a former land agent and agriculture consultant with SAC. In 2010 he did a Nuffield Scholarship on ‘The Farming Ladder’.

He is the producer and host of the popular farming podcast ‘The Pasture Pod’ and co-host – with Paul Allison – of the far less popular podcast “Cows and Effect”.

The Pasture Pod is usually very long with in depth chat about low input grass-based livestock farming systems, though Michael also did a documentary style series on Time in Farming, cleverly entitled “It’s About Time”.

Cows and Effect tries to mesh science and farming, looking at research papers on the likes of plant diversity in swards, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and whether fashioning a human poo into a knife then freezing it can make a useful cutting implement.

Micheal will be appearing on the morning panel discussion – From Villains to Heroes and again on The Sofa Chat in the evening