Newsletter – September 2024
This is our newsletter for September 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.
News
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 serve to create case studies to include in the report 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 Network 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 this month.
New, improved AFN Network+ website
The new AFN Network+ website is now live, with more content and features, allowing you to get more involved with the issues in agri-food. In particular, the new website includes:
- A member directory: Almost 400 of you already have a profile in the directory, and we hope as many of you as possible will add your details. You can share your interests and expertise, what you are working on, and find others who are doing the same. They will be able to find you too, and hopefully this will lead to more connections, cross-disciplinary working, and opportunities to address the key issues. Head here to sign up.
- Resource Hub: Bringing together all our webinars, podcast episodes, briefings, and key research and reports from other organisations, we want this to be a one-stop shop for agri-food and net zero.
Webinar
Alternative proteins – what’s in it for farmers & land use?
11 September, 13.00-14.00 BST
Livestock production and alternative proteins are likely to sit side-by-side in the coming years, with alternative products taking greater market share than currently. But what might this mean for farmers? And what potential might this present to use more land for carbon sequestration and other needs?
Prof Tom MacMillan and colleagues from the Royal Agricultural University argue that we should be exploring this question around cultured meat (one type of alt. protein) more seriously, and that involving farmers as the industry develops could benefit everyone. In his recent report, he and colleagues argue that cultured meat may even present new income opportunities for some farmers, give ‘real meat’ a marketing edge, and that using agricultural by-products could make cultured meat cheaper and more sustainable..
Lydia Collas and colleagues at Green Alliance have mapped out how a ‘land dividend’, created from shifting towards more alternative proteins, could enable European farmers to sequester more carbon for the carbon market, create more space for nature, contribute towards greater national self-sufficiency, and expand agro-ecological farming. Read the Green Alliance report, and country profiles.
We’ll be exploring all of this with our two speakers, and trying to push the conversation beyond the often polarised debate around this topic.
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.
News from the wider agri-food sector
Funding
Royal Society – Partnership Grants
Partnership grants are available to UK schools and colleges to carry out investigative STEM research projects in their classrooms in partnership with a STEM professional from academia or industry. The grants are designed to help schools and colleges purchase equipment to run these projects.
Deadline: 29 November 2024
More details
News
National alternative protein innovation centre launches
The UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and Innovate UK have invested £15 million in a new National Alternative Protein Innovation Centre (NAPIC).
The centre will drive research and innovation, bolstering the alternative proteins sector in the UK. Spanning the entire alternative protein supply chain, the centre will foster innovation across a variety of protein sources, from plant-based proteins and lab-grown meats to protein-rich algae.
The centre is a collaboration between researchers at the University of Leeds, The James Hutton Institute, Imperial College London, and The University of Sheffield.
A varied diet for health and wealth
Diversity needs to become the key principle by which we organise the entire food system – so argue Emmanuel Junior Zuza, Senior lecturer at the Royal Agricultural University and a member of the AFN Network+ ECR board, and Shonil Bhagwat, Professor of Environment and Development at The Open University.
They have published a paper which analyses the role of crop species diversity in food system transformation, focusing on monoculture vulnerabilities, diversification benefits, indigenous species’ role in nutrition and food security, and the importance of integrated policies and multi-stakeholder collaborations. They suggest that a diversity-based system can provide multiple benefits for the health of people and the planet, and could help distribute financial profits more equitably.
The potential of perennial green manures
The Perennial Green Manures (PGM) project explored how foliage harvested from trees, shrubs and perennials could be used as a nitrogen-rich sustainable fertiliser. It is hoped that growing and using PGMs could help tackle problems associated with nitrogen use, while also enabling farmers to benefit from tree-planting.
Nitrous oxide, emitted from soil after nitrogen applications, accounts for a third of the UK’s agricultural GHGs, and production of nitrogen fertiliser also produces CO2 emissions. The alternative of supplying nitrogen using traditional green manures provides beneficial organic matter to soil, but necessitates periodically taking cropland out of production.
Events
People Planet Profit: Growing a sustainable food and drink business
Thursday 19 September, 6pm – 10pm | Greendale Farm Shop, EX5 2JU
In an event supported by the AFN Network+ Stakeholder FlexFund, the Devon Food Partnership and Food Drink Devon are exploring how sustainable practices can help support your food or drink business. Hear case studies from other local food and drink businesses about their sustainability journeys and gain insight into how environmental and social sustainability could strengthen your enterprise.
Can we reduce carbon emissions from farms in Cornwall using biomethane?
Thursday 19 September and Thursday 26 September, 4:30pm – 6:30pm |Truro
Organised by the IFEAA this event will demonstrate the latest activity by Bennamann to capture methane emissions from dairy slurry and use them on farms to replace fossil fuels in tractors and trucks and to generate renewable electricity. Participants will visit Bennamann’s Headquarters at Chynoweth Farm where the team will share information about their methane capture technology, and then visit a nearby dairy farm where a system is installed to hear about its operation first-hand from the farmer.
More details: Eventbrite for 19th, Eventbrite for 26th or contact IFEAA on contact@methanehub.co.uk or www.methanehub.co.uk.
Environmental data research of the future
26 September 2024 | University of Glasgow
1 October 2024 | Virtual
9 October 2024 | London
Three identical workshops organised by NERC, these events aim to bring together key leaders across environmental, computational and data sciences in order to understand the challenges and opportunities for developing a coherent and accessible digital landscape for environmental researchers and innovators.
NERC is keen to capture views on the current barriers and enablers towards undertaking data-driven environmental science and how new capability and capacity might be built in this area.
More details: Booking deadline: 13 September 4pm for all events
Pioneer Presents: Accelerating innovation for the healthy, sustainable foods of the future
27 September, 9:30am – 3:30pm | Sittingbourne, Kent
This event will showcase how Kent researchers and businesses are leading the way in innovation for the healthy, sustainable foods of the future, and also discuss what is needed to accelerate the sector, including, infrastructure, investment, funding for R&D, skills, policy, regulation and consumer and customer acceptance.
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.
Vacancy
PhD to research farm tenancies
The North East of England has the highest number of farm tenancies in the UK. This PhD research will investigate the current situation of farm tenants, and the challenges they face as land use changes. It is anticipated that the research will involve interviewing farm tenants and estate owners, and possible comparison with tenant farmers in other parts of the UK. Additional interviews will involve people dealing with the legal framework of tenancies to gain knowledge of restrictive covenants and other legal matters linked to tenancies. A knowledge of the UK is desirable
Can you help?
Circular Economy Strategy Adoption in the UK Agri-Food Sector
Can you contribute to a study that explores organisational change in the transition to a circular economy, with a focus on the adoption of circular economy strategies by stakeholders in the UK agri-food sector? It seeks to understand the influence of national policy on these changes and vice versa.
If you work as a consultant, policy maker, food producer or researcher your perspective matters, and they want to hear from you! Interested in participating or would like more information? Please reach out via email.
Electric Nitrogen survey
To reduce emissions from nitrogen fertilisers, the UK Agri-Tech Centre is working with The Electric Nitrogen consortium, led by Debye Ltd, to develop a modular device that uses atmospheric nitrogen, water and electricity to produce liquid nitrate. This would allow farmers and growers to produce their own environmentally friendly ‘zero carbon’ liquid nitrogen fertiliser ‘on-farm’. This video explains the process. To inform this, the UK Agro-Tech Centre is conducting a survey – one for outdoor farming and one for indoor farming . Alternatively, please contact aurelie.bovi@ukagritechcentre.com or emily.harrison@ukagritechcentre.com if you have any query or would prefer to be contacted by phone.
