**Carbon Cluck-Char** is a circular farming project aimed at transforming poultry litter--an environmental and disposal challenge--into a valuable biochar product with multiple benefits. By processing poultry bedding through high-temperature pyrolysis, Carbon Cluck-Char will create a biochar that can be applied in both biogas production and as a sustainable fertiliser for arable fields, effectively creating a closed-loop system. Working with partners across agriculture, technology, and biogas sectors, the project will also develop automated litter monitoring tools to help farmers best allocate biochar. The collaboration will demonstrate how poultry farms can turn waste into profit, reducing costs associated with disposal and compliance while generating new revenue through sustainable fertiliser and energy sources. This project ultimately supports the UK's agricultural resilience and commitment to circular economy practices.

Irrigated agriculture and horticulture produce a significant proportion of the nation's fresh fruit and vegetable crops, potatoes and sugar beet, underpinning a food processing industry that is the UK's largest manufacturing sector. Despite its economic importance, the sector faces profound environmental, water, energy and climate-related risks which collectively threaten the future viability and sustainability of many farm businesses dependent on water. Whilst farmers remain keen to invest in reservoirs to reduce their dependence on summer abstraction and increase supply reliability, to build resilience to climate (drought) risks, and to unlock business productivity, their current financial models fail to justify the significant capital expenditure required for reservoir investment. Mindsets need to shift from 'single use' (irrigation in dry years) to 'multi-use' reservoirs incorporating opportunities for green energy generation. An innovative solution is through installation of floating solar panels, so-called floatovoltaics. Supporting such a change offers scope for a paradigm shift in financial viability that will unlock opportunities for farm business growth and diversification, whilst also delivering significant environmental benefits through reduced dependence on summer abstraction and reduced GHG emissions (pumping switching from fossil fuel to solar). It will also drive greater uptake of renewable energy technologies, help avoid 'pollution swapping' and minimise conflicts between land allocated for food cropping or for solar farms. The aim of this feasibility study is to develop an optimisation tool to support business investment in multi-use reservoirs for both solar power generation and irrigation. The tool will inform farmer decision-making across three domains with relevance to (i) _water resources and crop productivity_, including how to utilise stored water most effectively to support production whilst also delivering aquatic environmental improvements,(ii) _solar energy generation, storage and use_, including how to optimise the design and installation of floating solar platforms on reservoirs and their benefits in terms of renewable energy generation, reducing evaporation losses, reducing dependence on fossil fuels and building resilience to energy market volatility and reducing farm emissions to meet net zero targets, and (iii) _reducing the sector's vulnerability to environmental regulations and abiotic risks_, including the impacts of increased frequency of droughts on water availability for production and impacts of abstraction changes on summer water availability. The project will have a national focus supporting the Sustainable Farming Incentive, the government's 'Plan for Water' and 'Water Management Grant' scheme which supports investments in water efficiency and reservoirs, and policy reforms to address environmental damage caused by over-abstraction.

**Climate SAFE** -- **Climate** neutral -- Integrated **S**ystems for **A**griculture, **F**arming, energy and the **E**nvironment Climate SAFE is a radical and transformative whole systems approach that transitions from traditional organic farming on degraded lowland peat, towards climate resilient, controlled environment agriculture (CEA) with a broad array of interlinked societal, environmental and economic benefits. The premise of Climate SAFE is to rewet and restore degraded peatlands and establish short rotation coppice willow (SRCW) that removes CO2 from the atmosphere via photosynthesis. This simultaneously abates landscape soil emissions from agriculturally drained lowland peat, which accounts for 3% of total UK GHG emission, and sequesters carbon from the atmosphere through SRCW. The land use change also creates multi-functional eco-system services including water quality and supply enhancement, flood alleviation, nutrient neutrality, biodiversity net gain (BNG) and opportunities for informal recreation and eco-tourism. All of these enhance the resilience of the farm business model and rural economy. SRCW is harvested as a crop and fed into high temperature pyrolysis, producing biochar, a solid form of approximately 86% carbon. Long term stable carbon sequestration is achieved by burying biochar in an engineered carbon storage solution which the Lapwing Estate have patented. This is one of the most concentrated and most easily verifiable of all carbon mass-storage solutions offering up to **45,408t CO2e stored per hectare**. Energy from pyrolysis is utilised in CEA to enhance food production, securing future food supply and improving resilience towards climate change. This solves the inherent dilemma of bioenergy crops: the loss of land from food production which leads to land use change in other parts of the World, in most cases leading to a net increase in carbon emissions globally. **Climate SAFE is the first of its kind in allowing agriculture, environment and energy systems to co-exist in a single farming system. It will deliver against multiple sectoral strategies, including: UK Government 25 Year Environment Plan (2018) and Environmental Improvement Plan (2023); Government Food Strategy (2022); the British Energy Security Strategy (2022); Powering Up Britain (2023).**

Broccoli one of the UK's favourite vegetables is even today harvested by seasonal workers who walk in the crop to select and cut only the ripe broccoli heads. Growers have been facing chronic labour shortages and increasing costs. In 2021 £' millions of broccoli crops were left unharvested due to a shortage of seasonal labour UK. For 2022 broccoli and brassica growers have cut back their plantings so more broccoli will be imported to meet needs -- driving up costs and increasing food mile CO2 emissions. Farmers across the world are searching for an automated harvesting solution. This project will take a world-leading proof of concept broccoli harvesting machine to infield testing in 2022 and a pre-production prototype in 2023\. The new automated approach will harvest the whole plant, opening up the potential to create valuable and nutritious plant-based foods from what was previously seen as crop waste.

This project will develop LightWeeder -- a world-first eye-safe, herbicide-free, carbon neutral, commercially viable light-based weeding system; delivered by lightweight autonomous field robots via UK agri-robotics company Earth Rover (ER).

The Earth Rover led consortium will build a prototype selective that will contribute to solving the problem of a shortage of seasonal agricultural labour required to pick crops due to COVID-19 travel restrictions and Brexit. The robots use an AI-powered vision system to select in-spec broccoli and leave crop growing so reducing crop waste. A gang of three robots can select and cut up to 12 broccoli heads in 5 seconds. The cut heads are passed to a conveyor system mounted on a tractor and packed. The project will place the UK at the forefront of agricultural robotics and offers the potential to create high-value jobs and valuable export opportunities.