Dr Helen Ferrier is the NFU’s Chief Science Adviser. She explains why the NFU is taking key figures in the research community out of the offices and onto members’ farms.
She writes:
For many of us working in the busy world of policy and academia, it is hard to prize our noses from the grindstone and pull on our wellies. But at the NFU we know it is important to get as many decision-makers out of the office and onto members’ farms.
NFU Deputy President Minette Batters organised a recent visit, starting at her farm at Downton. As a tenant farmer on the Longford Estate, she built her business from a standing start in 1998 and now has a beef suckler herd of more than 300 animals. The farm is on the flood plain of the Salisbury Avon, and is next door to the largest trout farm in Europe. We saw Minette’s wedding venue, an impressive 17th Century tithe barn. This kind of diversification is an important part of the UK’s farming industry.
Our visitors were from the rolls-off-your-tongue BBSRC - Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. It is the main source of money for agricultural research in the UK, funded by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. A new chair of the BBSRC has just been announced, Sir Gordon Duff, as well as two new members of its governing council.
With an annual budget of £484 million for research across the biosciences, it is of significant importance to NFU members, which I suspect few will realise. NFU Council will get the chance to hear more about the BBSRC when its Chief Executive, Prof Jackie Hunter, speaks at a forthcoming Council meeting.
The Nunton Farm dairy herd was our next stop, where three generations of the Martin family milk around 720 cows near Salisbury. Theirs is a predominantly grass-based “low cost” system of New Zealand Friesians (plus some Jersey genetics in the mix), with calving in autumn and spring. But the distinguishing feature of this farm was certainly not low cost -- a Milfos rotary parlour, imported from NZ last year.
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The efficiency gains are clear, as the cows queue up twice a day and load themselves onto the milking merry-go-round. One rotation, a bit of food and they are off and away leaving their slot for the next happy customer in the queue.
At this farm our visitors saw high-tech innovation, strategic investment, targeted sourcing of genetics and an analytical approach to nutrition married to a genuine passion for welfare and the environment. Hosting school visits and Open Farm Sunday shows the Martin family’s commitment to education too.
I have no doubt that the day in the Avon Valley left a lasting an impression on our BBSRC friends as it did on me. It reminds us that our jobs negotiating the complexity of the agricultural science funding landscape must have at their heart British farming businesses and the potential to grow and prosper in this uncertain world.
(Our visitors were Executive Director of Innovation and Skills Celia Caulcott, Executive Director of Corporate Policy and Strategy, Paul Burrows, and Head of Business Interaction Andy Cureton)