Global human population forecasts of 10 billion by 2050 will raise food demand by 70% against a requirement for lower environmental impacts. England's livestock agriculture is tasked with increasing efficiency of production while reducing environmental impacts. Thus, GHG emissions must contract by 78% (2035), with a livestock industry seeking net- zero (2050) against a background of escalating energy/input costs. Ruminants only capture around 25% of nitrogen ingested from grasslands and create 45% of UK methane emissions through rumen digestion, manure and slurry. To reduce GHG/nutrient loading, more herbage protein must convert into meat and milk. **NUE-Leg** will directly address this challenge by developing technological solutions to reduce environmental impacts while enhancing the economics and sustainability of grassland farming. UK ruminant production relies predominately on nitrogen fertiliser-driven perennial ryegrass, sometimes with white clover. Increased energy and nitrogen costs highlight the value of forage legume N-fixation which, with enhanced production efficiency and consistency, could lower a ruminant's environmental impact. The industry is over reliant on applied N, largely ignoring the production benefits of proper soil nutrient balances and the specific micronutrient requirements for legume-rhizobium symbiosis. Transformation of the UK ruminant sector to systems that beneficially exploit forage legumes requires a paradigm shift in forage legume breeding and management to enhance key genetic traits tailored to exploit precision crop management strategies that together deliver higher more consistent sward productivity. A novel alliance between legume breeders, soil scientists, NGO/charity and industry across supply chains will provide farmers with the tools and resources to exploit these legume/nutrient benefits for productivity, farm economics and environmental improvement. Academic and industry partners will work with livestock farmers using participatory research to quantify the on-farm impact of innovative varieties of three forage legume species, supported by elite rhizobia strains and state-of-the-art prescription nutrient fertilisers for optimal N-fixation. The benefits for livestock production will be evaluated and mitigation potential for environmental protection analysed using life-cycle-assessment. On-farm trials conducted by supply chain partners/LEAF will test and develop technology in practice and widely demonstrate the achievable benefits to grassland farmers across the beef, sheep and dairy sectors. **NUE-Leg** will deliver blueprints for exploiting novel, elite legume varieties and identify traits for continued breeding improvement, determine farm-specific prescription nutrient need and provide digital KE systems to guide farmers. This integrated optimisation approach will greatly enhance grassland farming in mitigating enteric methane emissions, lowering nitrate losses, while boosting ruminant productivity and sustainable farm businesses.

Agricultural systems are complex, and must be managed if we are to achieve food security and maintain environmental quality. The management of complex systems in industry and commerce is being improved by the collection, processing and analysis of "big data" sets. For some years farmers have had the potential to collect big data sets on their crops and soils using GPS-driven monitors on the combine or tractor, data from satellite-borne sensors and the direct sampling and analysis of soils. This raises the question of whether agriculture can enter the big data era in order to solve management problems more quickly and robustly than through the conventional approach of field trials at a limited number of experimental sites. We contend that this is possible, but only by using methods to analyse the data that are biologically meaningful rather than by blindly mining data for correlations. This is a feasibility study to test two tailored big-data analytical methods on a large data

The benefits of precision farming (PF) - dividing land into management zones according to soil characteristics - has been proven to yield better results when compared to conventional farming. The perceived high entry cost into PF has long been a barrier to entry for some smaller arable farmers. This project aims to make the financial entry into PF more affordable whilst not compromising on the high resolution data required to produce meaningful soil management zones. This large-scale collaborative project aims to integrate satellite data with the UK’s most comprehensive soil datasets to produce a ‘precision soil map’. The resultant map would present an economically viable alternative to the current labour intensive methodology of soil surveying and represents a very exciting opportunity for arable and vegetable farming to embrace precision farming. Growers will be able to increase yields with lower input costs and reduced environmental impact.

This feasibility project will consider the use of Sentinal 1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data to aid the arable food production system. The current use of crop biomass imagery from optical imagery (NDVI) is popular with farmers but is reliant upon clear, cloud-free skies. SAR will provide data in all conditions, day and night thus providing a detailed and reliable source of crop growth data for farmers. This project could present a huge breakthrough in non-space related satellite applications. Previous study suggests that SAR data is capable of pinpointing different growth stages which is critical in arable farming for delivering treatments and fertiliser at the right time. This study will use existing NDVI imagery along with detailed SAR data and field data to help model a new crop growth index. Not viable previously, due to the restrictively high cost, Sentinel SAR data is now freely available allowing the development of new applications that could make a real difference to farmers.

AgSpace Agrilculture Ltd is a new company set up to wholesale the Intelligent Precision Farming (IPF) Toolbox and manage the resultant data. AgSpace retains the IP for all the data it stores however the data creation element remains the IP for the individual companies feeding information into the precision farming software (Toolbox). An IP audit would be beneficial for AgSpace to secure its own IP and ensure protection for those companies using the IPF Toolbox.