To place the UK on the path to Net Zero by 2050, the Committee on Climate Change recommends increasing UK woodland cover from its current level of 13% of total land cover to at least 17% and potentially 19%. A 19% increase means an extra 1.6 billion trees
The Government's Tree Action Pan 2021-2024 has committed to increasing tree planting rates across the UK to 30,000Ha per year by the end of this Parliament.
For public health and environmental reasons, pesticides, that are used to control weeds, disease and insects are at continual risk of being banned in the UK.
To date the UK is meeting demand by importing trees and plants in unprecendented quantities. According to The Woodland Trust, imports rose by 92% from £52 million in 2016 to £100 million in 2020\. But the increased trajectory of imports is directly associated with the spread of disease. At least 20 serious tree pests and diseases have arrived since 1990 resulting in the loss of tens of millions of trees. Most have been brought in by imported trees.
The UK has one of the best climates in the world for raising young trees. Investment in new forest nursery techniques and technologies will equip them to grown all the trees needed to meet planting targets, while creating jobs. Clearing up the devastation caused by ash dieback will cost an estimated £15 billion. A fraction of that could galvanise UK forest nurseries into production of diverse, healthy, native, regional trees on an industrial scale
This project will:
* Create a 1Ha forest nursery incorporating a minimum 5 tree and hedging species
* Assess the effectiveness of solar powered crop establishment technology
* Grow all plants to Soil Association organic standards
* Assess germination, plant health, potential yield and cost
* Assess the benefits of organically approved, biobased soil conditioners and seed treatments
* Analyse the organic forest nursery market
The aim is to not only improve the productivity and resilience of our own farming business but also to demonstrate and report a cropping opportunity that can be replicated by other growers throughout the UK's regions.
The results from the study will be pooled with existing UK forestry research to help to form a solid basis for further growth in the face of increased competition from imports and a decreasing number of chemical plant protective products.
Quality, productive pasture is essential for efficient livestock production. Currently farmers walk their fields with a plate meter to assess grass biomass available for livestock grazing. This approach does not accurately reflect field quality, nor likely future growth under climate change, limiting accuracy of pasture management decisions.
PASTORAL combines satellite data with advanced algorithms, delivering weekly intelligence on grass biomass and carbon budgets through a co-designed platform to increase farm productivity and carbon efficiency.
The service will be co-designed with c.100 livestock farmers across England, with service testing/development and demonstration across organic, regenerative agriculture and conventional farming systems.
Farm-PEP (Performance Enhancement Partnerships) develops the platform, tools and partnerships that will enable farmers, advisors, industry and scientists to identify, test and share crop production practices that work on-farm. This will be achieved by: 1\. Providing farmers with the platform and digital connections that enable them to access and develop knowledge and develop/share ideas for improving farm performance; 2\. Providing benchmarking tools so that farmers can compare to other farms and identify what factors are driving/constraining performance, 3\. Developing digital tools that enable farmers and advisors to conduct field-scale experiments to test new ideas on-farm.
Covid19 has necessitated a rapid shift to digital communications by all individuals and organisations. Platforms that were already being used regularly by some (eg Teams, Zoom) have now become essential to many, and new solutions and technologies continue to emerge, along with the collective knowhow. However, these have not been able to fill the hole in the communication, conversation, networking and engagement space left by the absence of face-to-face shows, meetings and events in agriculture. There has so far been no formal evaluation of the impacts of Covid19 on Knowledge Exchange (KE) in agriculture or other sectors. Such KE is essential to progress in agriculture, enabling the improvement of food security & quality, productivity, profitability, sustainability, social welfare and the environment. Covid19 has highlighted the importance of agriculture in the UK, which now faces multiple challenges (and opportunities). UK agricultural productivity has lagged behind competitors for decades, in part due to fragmentation of the knowledge system.
As the UK's leading independent provider of agricultural research and KE, ADAS will lead an Action Research approach, working with practitioners to evaluate and provide urgent insights into the impacts and responses in the AKIS and what KE approaches work best in the face of Covid19 disruption. Multiple stakeholders will co-create a new digital solution (Farm-PEP), bringing together tools, experience and knowhow to provide a dedicated Covid-secure online community space for KE. Crucially, this will integrate existing tools & initiatives (The Farming Forum, Agri-techE, Innovative Farmers, Yield Enhancement Network, Agricology, AHDB) and make full use of the social media, video and podcasts which have become important in recent months. Nothing comparable to Farm-PEP currently exists. Current platforms are disjointed and siloed, with discussions temporary in nature, easy to miss, and rarely leading to rich outcomes or collaboration. They do not contribute to a recognised knowledge base, with little opportunity for inclusive distillation, connection, development of ideas for further exploration or forming of coherent messages for widespread adoption. Farm-PEP will provide the space for deeper, trusted, meaningful connections, knowledge sharing, community building and collaboration. It will provide solutions and spaces where people can find out what's going on across the industry, can demonstrate what they are doing and solicit feedback in order to build shared knowledge. It will enable serendipitous, synchronous and asynchronous discussions and connections to be made around topics of interest.