New report launched today by the NFU, Innovate UK and CEIA, reveals the challenges that farmers and growers want researchers to prioritise solving.
9 October 2024
The Centre for Effective Innovation in Agriculture (CEIA), in partnership with AUC and others, today launched a new report to better understand the research priorities of farmers and growers. This project was the delivery of a recommendation within our Joint Research Strategy of finding a better way to involve stakeholders in priority setting with a goal of increasing the relevance and impact of research.
What did we find?
Artificial intelligence, methane, carbon sequestration, regenerative systems, financing, and antimicrobial resistance are just some of the themes that farmers would like researchers to find answers to.
The project draws on conversations with almost 100 farmers and growers during a series of workshops, showing that, while some priorities such as soil health and disease control have stayed consistent since the last major review in 2013, a whole wave of new themes has now risen to the fore.
While the focus of the project was on what to research, farmers were also concerned with how research is done, and particularly, how useful it ends up being in practice. The findings also suggested that farmers and growers have an appetite to be more involved in the development, design and delivery of research.
The report also found that farmer and grower research priorities aligned well with the strategic priorities of funders, particularly around sustainable agricultural systems.
Who was involved?
Organisations held workshops with their network members:
Agricultural Industries Confederation (AIC)
Agri-Tech Centres - CHAP, CIEL and Agri-EPI
Innovation for Agriculture
Innovative Farmers
Landworkers Alliance
National Farmers Union (NFU) and National Farmers Union Cymru
Commissioning Group
Agricultural Universities Council (AUC), The Institute for Agriculture and Horticulture (TIAH), DEFRA, AHDB, LEAF, BBSRC, Soil Association, Nature Friendly Farming Network and Rothamsted Research.
Read the full report
To read the full report, access the workshop data and to explore the interactive findings, visit the CEIA website (button below).
Funders
We are grateful to the funders for supporting this project.
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