Newsletter

Newsletter – October 2024

This is our newsletter for October 2024. Please note that this page is not updated, so deadlines may have passed and links may no longer work. To receive future newsletters, please join our network.

Help us gather feedback on EDI and the AFN Network+

Over the next year, we will be researching the quality and impact of our approach to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) and related initiatives. This will result in a set of EDI recommendations of best practices and will be published as a report to be shared with UKRI and beyond as part of the Network’s legacy to meaningfully influence EDI.

Data collection

UWE staff Jo Bushell, Research Associate Food Systems, and Sophie Constant, Project Manager – AFN Network+, will be collecting EDI data in different ways. This will include the annual survey that will go out to all Network members and a series of short, 15-minute interviews and focus groups with Network members. The interviews will be used to create case studies and will ask members about their experiences of how the Network has helped their career.

To achieve this, we would love to hear from any members willing to help and be interviewed. If this is you, please email us at contact@agrifood4netzero.net as soon as possible. We are looking to start the interviews soon.

Webinar

Labour’s first 100 days – where are we heading on food, farming & climate?

Wednesday 16 October, 2 – 3pm

One hundred days into Labour being in office, this webinar will examine what the new government has done so far, and look for evidence about where things might be heading. The two speakers spend their time trying to understand the workings of policy in food and farming and will help us delve into this topic. They are Hannah Brinsden, head of food policy and advocacy at The Food Foundation, and Andrew Meredith, editor of Farmers Weekly. The webinar will be chaired by Jez Fredenburgh, Knowledge Exchange Fellow at the AFN Network+.

Sign up here

Save the date: Big Tent 2025

Our Big Tent is the main meeting of the year for the AFN Network+, where stakeholders from across the agri-food system come together for two days of learning, collaboration and networking. Next year’s event will be held on the 11 and 12 March in Manchester. Please save the date in your calendar. Read more about this year’s Big Tent.

Stakeholder FlexFund – latest projects and deadline approaching

The AFN Network+ operates a rolling flexible fund for UK-based stakeholders to implement activities that support our mission to build a community working towards achieving net zero through the agri-food sector by 2050.

We are delighted to announce the latest projects to receive funding:

  • Twisted Orange Limited – Visual focus groups (VFGs) with secondary school pupils to better understand how school meal choices can be promoted to encourage increased uptake of more sustainable food items.
  • Farm Carbon Toolkit – Orkney – Workshopping the shape of a new Farm Net Zero programme for the island.
  • Farm Carbon Toolkit – Cornwall – Creating a farm cluster group in SE Cornwall to share experiences, hopes, fears and education about mitigating and adapting to climate change.
  • Bristol Food Network – Running an event for Bristol’s hospitality businesses to share knowledge and good practice on how to reduce food waste.
  • Better Food Traders – Gathering evidence on the impacts of more localised, organic and circular routes to market.

The total amount you can apply for is between £1,000 – £5,000. There are two more rounds of the fund: the next is on 1 November 2024, then there will be one more, closing on 1 February 2025. The fund is open to members of the AFN Network+ and is for any UK-based activity that explores, develops and trials solutions to reduce and sequester greenhouse gas emissions through agri-food. This could be at any point: from primary production (agriculture, horticulture and aquaculture) and food processing (food and drink manufacture) to food retail, consumption, and waste management.

Find out more about the FlexFund.

News from the AFN Champions

Events

Agroforestry Research and the REFOREST Project

Monday 28 October, 3:30 – 5pm

Organised by Charlotte Wheeler, Year 2 AFN Champion for Circular Food Systems, join Tom Staton of Reading University and Will Simonson of the Organic Research Centre for a review of the latest findings from the REFOREST project – a 4-year Europe-wide project looking at interventions to improve the uptake of agroforestry on farms. The webinar will cover agroforestry’s potential contribution to net zero, its knowledge infrastructure and how it has evolved over recent decades. Tom and Will will also describe the ReForest UK living lab, including the application of the FarmTree tool to model agroforestry performance, and assessments of the sustainability of agroforestry using the Public Goods Tool.

Sign up here

Herbal Ley and Diverse Swards Webinar

Monday 4 November 6 – 7:30pm

Also organised by Charlotte, join the Soil Association and Pasture for Life for a webinar on herbal leys, featuring expert guest speakers Siobhan Griffin from Next Level Grazing, and Sam Lane from Cotswolds Seeds. Siobhan and Sam will discuss how to select the correct mix for your context, proper establishment, and crucially, ongoing grazing management to maximise the positive outcomes herbal leys can deliver. This webinar is particularly focused at both arable and dairy farmers who are interested in using herbal leys as part of their rotation or across the grazing rotation on their platform, and for those looking to integrate livestock into an arable system.

Sign up here

News from the Stakeholder FlexFund Projects

Event

Regional Food Hub support programme

Tuesday 22 October, 12 – 1pm

Do you manage or want to set up a Regional Food Hub? Do you need some extra guidance to get off the ground, or are you looking to scale up or scale out your operations? Better Food Traders, the Soil Association, Sustain and Growing Communities are launching a 12-month programme of sector-specific training, business advice and peer support for Food Hub Managers, starting in January. The programme aims to support enterprises focused on wholesale and/or procurement, to grow routes to market for local, agroecological produce. Come along to a Q&A session to learn more and find out how to sign up (sign up here), or email lois@betterfoodtraders.org for more info.

News from the wider agri-food sector

Funding

UK Innovate – Agri-tech and food technology, Eastern England          

UK registered businesses can apply for a share of up to £2.5 million for business-led projects that grow their innovation activities in the agri-tech and food technology cluster in Eastern England. This funding is from Innovate UK.

Deadline: 6 November 2024
More details

ARIA – Synthetic Plants

This ARIA programme aims to catalyse a new generation of major crops that are more productive, resilient, and sustainable.

This round seeks R&D Creators, individuals and teams that ARIA will fund to:

  • Demonstrate that developing and implementing a functioning synthetic unit is possible, paving the way for progress in future decades;
  • Overcome historic bottlenecks to breakthroughs in the overlap between synthetic and plant biology, specifically delivery of units to cells and maintenance of units in cells, to increase the number of plant varieties that can be transformed and sustained;
  • Understand the ethical and social considerations around synthetic plants and what’s needed to navigate them.

Deadline: 12 November for full proposal
Further information

News

Geospatial Innovation For Food Security Challenge

The Taylor Geospatial Institute (TGI) is launching a Challenge to demonstrate how emergent geospatial technologies and methods can promote security, sustainability, and equity across the global food system. This Challenge will connect geospatial experts with researchers and professionals with deep knowledge of challenges and opportunities across the food system. Through its activities, it will foster collaborations to identify problems where geospatial capabilities can be most impactful and invest in projects that propose novel approaches to addressing them.

You can contribute your views via this horizon scanning survey. They are also planning some online events to gather broader feedback. If you would like to be added to their mailing list to be kept up to date, please email rachel.opitz@taylorgeospatial.org.

Event

Wales real food and farming conference

20-22 November | University of Wales Trinity St David, Lampeter

Sponsored this year by the AFN Network+, the Wales Real Food and Farming Conference was established to explore sustainable food and farming, bringing together farmers and other food businesses, environmentalists and people involved in public health, food education, food sovereignty and social justice. Its aim is to open conversations and take positive steps about the future of food in our country, mapping out a sustainable 21st century food system for Wales and how we might begin to build it.

More details

Vacancies

Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research

A search is underway for a new Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. The search is being conducted by Odgers Berndtson.

More details: Candidate brief
Closing date: 7 October

Project and Knowledge Exchange Lead, University of Oxford

The new Agricultural Resilience Impact and Innovation (AGRII) Hub at the University of Oxford is looking for a knowledge-exchange-focused project lead to deliver core work packages . The successful applicant will build the knowledge base, partnerships and networks for developing the strategic direction of the AGRII Hub and help to identify exciting research and funding opportunities that help to solve the grand challenge of how to better balance food production with nature and climate.

More details
Deadline: 11 October

Backcasting to Increase Food System Resilience in the UK (BAFR-UK)

With food systems optimised for efficiency rather than resilience, they are at risk of actual or apparent failure, especially due to the impacts of increasing geopolitical instability and climate change. To explore these issues the Global Sustainability Institute at Anglia Ruskin University has recently been awarded a three-year, £2 million project called Backcasting to Increase Food System Resilience in the UK (BAFR-UK). There are two current vacancies on the project:

Post Doc Research Fellow (BBSRC)
More details
Closing date: 11 October

Project Manager
More details
Closing date: 11 October

Can you help?

Defra – New and Emerging Climate Mitigation Measures in Agriculture

As part of a Defra Funded Project – The Evaluation of Market Ready agricultural Technology Options (TEMaRTO) – colleagues at SRUC are updating farming technologies and carbon abatement for the seventh carbon budget. As part of their work they are compiling a long-list of new technologies and practices. They have created a short survey, which should take around five minutes to complete. It doesn’t ask for any personal details and merely seeks to find new technologies and practices to add to their list. Survey in English. Survey in Welsh.