AHDB Guides

Farm-PEP aims to bring together all the sources of useful knowledge for Agriculture, whether from academic science, applied research projects, industry trials, farmers own trials or simple on-farm experience. Listed below are useful websites, organisations and websites that we know of.  Add any we've missed in the comments box or by adding as new content, or better still, as a new Group.

 

Many organisations are involved in the knowledge landscape of UK agriculture, some of which are shown below. Farm-PEP aims to help connect across these organisations and initiatives to generate, share and distill knowledge across the community.

 

Lots of resources on the web that aim to produce and collate knowledge for different audiences and different purposes across agriculture and food, but they are not necessarily known to all. 

Below we've listed some of the useful sources we know of, but this isn't exhaustive. Please add any we've missed, and let us know which you think are most useful and why.

 

Levy Bodies  Knowledge Repositories
AHDB - Cereals, Oliseeds, Dairy, Beef, Lamb & Pigs National Library for Agrifood
PGRO - Pulses Agricology
BBRO - Sugar beet Ask Valerie
  BovINE Knowledge Hub
  Organic Research Centre
  Organic Farm Knowledge
Regional Table
Farming Connect - Wales Farm Wildlife
SAOS - Scotland Conservation Evidence
RISS - Rural Innovation Support Service - Scotland Catchment Based Approach       Pin Point
Swarmhub - South West

Ecosystems Knowledge Network
  National Biodiversity Network 
  Environmental Evidence

 

Communities & Networks Organisations Events
The Farming Forum ADAS Groundswell
Innovative Farmers NIAB Oxford Farming Conference
Agri-techE SRUC Oxford Real Farming Conference
BASE UK CHAP Cereals
Regen Agri Agri-EPI Grassland & Muck
Farm Community Network - FarmWell CIEL CropTec
Nature Friendly Farming Network Agrimetrics REAP
Nuffield Farming Scholarships Innovation for Agriculture  
Yield Enhancement Networks LEAF  
British Society of Soil Science BASIS  
Association of Applied Biologists Maize Growers Association AAB conferences
Farmer Clusters    
British Society of Animal Science    
British Grassland Society    
Farm Carbon Toolkit    
Food, Farming & Countryside Commision    
Pasture Fed Livestock Association    
RABDF    
GrowIN    
     
Farming Press Academic Podcasts
Farmers Weekly Rothamsted Repository Farming Today
Farmers Guardian Gateway to Research Future Farming - Defra
Agronomist and Arable Farmer Burleigh Dodds Publishing Rock & Roll Farming
Crop Production Magazine   Over the Farm Gate
Agriland   Crop It like its Hot
Future Farming    
Poultry World    
The Poultry Site    
Pig World    
     
Commercial Education & Skills International
  TIAH EIP-Agri
BASF Real Results Virtual Farm BASIS EU Farmbook
Agrii iFarms National Land Based College Sho-yae-fae
Hutchinsons Helix Farm FarmEd TAPipedia
Agrovista   All Ag Considered
Syngenta    
Bayer    
Frontier    
Promar Kingshay  

 

Suggest more or say what works for you below

Content below is from across the PEP community and is not necessarily endorsed by Stewards or by PEP

Topic Comments

Discussion

15/02/2022 - 06:14

Share here any organisations or initiatives from the list above, and we'll add in

2

Connected Content

Science for Sustainable Agriculture

Science for Sustainable Agriculture aims to ensure the positive contribution of scientific innovation in agriculture and food production is recognised in public life and policy making.

DEFRA

The Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs.

FLIN Farmer-led Innovation Network

The Farmer-Led Innovation Network (FLIN) are UK based organisations driving farmer-led innovation - working together to power up and increase the impact of farmer led innovation initiatives.

Agricultural Universities Council (AUC-UK)

The Agricultural Universities Council (AUC-UK) is a collaboration of the UK universities with agricultural schools or departments. AUC-UK works together to coordinate our teaching and research, to make the biggest contribution we can to a resilient and sustainable future for agriculture, land management and food systems.

AHDB

We deliver transformational projects to drive productivity and boost farming and supply chain businesses. We want the industry to thrive in a rapidly changing world and continue to produce high quality food, maintain our beautiful landscape and leave a legacy for generations to come. 

Farming Innovation Programme (FIP)

The Farming Innovation Programme is part of Defra’s investment in innovation, research and development. Defra is partnering with UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) on the programme. 

CaBA Agricultural Advice Hub

A free to use online data hub building on the Catchment Based Approach (CaBA) data package providing spatially relevant local information to farmers, land managers and advisors.

Farming Connect

Knowledge and business support for farmers in Wales

BASIS

BASIS is a charitable organisation committed to independently raising professional standards across the land management and food production sectors, by supporting people and businesses with our industry leading qualifications, professional memberships and auditing schemes.

Education & Skills

Building the right skills for the agricultural industry has been recognised as crucial to its future success.

SRUC

Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) was established in 2012 through the merger of the Scottish Agricultural College (SAC) with Barony, Elmwood and Oatridge Colleges. Through these institutions, we can trace our lineage back over 100 years.

NCSPulse PEP
Farm centric research

Farm-centric research generally involves On-Farm Experimentation and may be better described as 'Farm Action Research', i.e. research conducted at least in part by and for beneficiaries who also farm. 

Rothamsted Research

Rothamsted Research is a world-leading, non-profit research centre that focuses on strategic agricultural science to the benefit of farmers and society worldwide.

PGRO

As the UK's centre of excellence for peas and beans, the PGRO has a long and highly valued track record of providing authoritative, up to date information and project work based on solid, reliable research.

NCSPulse PEP
Funding

Funding available for research and knowledge exchange in the UK comes from a mix of public, industry and charitable sources

Farm-PEP

The ideas behind Farm-PEP came together in ~2018, drawing from the developments of Agronomics, the YENs, AHDB's Monitor Farm programme and the idea of a 'What Works' Centre for Agriculture. 

AICC

AICC member agronomists are now the preferred source of advice on over 2.2 million hectares, which is almost half of the UK’s arable land, and the demand for it is stronger than ever

Events

Agricultural Shows have always been a very important place for farmers and the industry to share knowledge. The nature of agricultural shows has changed, but there are now an increasing number of staple events for a range of communities.

Burleigh Dodds Science Publishing

Burleigh Dodds Science Publishing is an award winning independent publisher founded by Rob Burleigh and Francis Dodds in 2015. Our mission is to bring you the key research and latest trends to empower you to make a positive impact on sustainable agriculture, climate change and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. More information at www.bdspublishing.com.  

Innovate UK KTN

We create diverse connections to drive positive change.

RAU Royal Agricultural University

Thrive through change with the Royal Agricultural University

James Hutton Institute

The James Hutton Institute combines strengths in crops, soils and land use and environmental research, and makes a major contribution to the understanding of key global issues, such as food, energy and environmental security, and developing and promoting effective technological and management solutions to these.

NCSPulse PEP
Oxford Farming Conference 2023

OFC 2023 will explore systemic solutions to the cumulative biodiversity, climate, food and energy crises that collectively we are facing, with optimism and determination not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

FarmPEP: a platform to support farm-centric knowledge generation and knowledge exchange - IFS Poster abstract

Poster paper given at IFS 2022 by Daniel Kindred, Roger Sylvester-Bradley, Pete Berry and colleagues. Conventional routes to generating knowledge of ‘what works’ in agriculture have relied on (i) farmers developing their experiences and passing these on locally, and (ii) researchers conducting small plot experiments on a limited number of sites, analysing data and drawing conclusions in a more generic top-down fashion. The advent of (i) the internet enabling ideas and data to be shared widely and (ii) precision farming technologies enabling comparisons or trials by farms, provides the opportunity to interconnect the top-down approach with a more robust farm-centric bottom-up approach.

Science and agriculture: promoting beneficial symbiosis

Scientific paper looking at the relationships between scientists and farmers:

Research

Agricultural research is conducted by a range of organisations, from individual farmers, through advisors, distributors, manufacturers, charities, societies, supply chain companies, levy bodies, universities and research institutes.  This page aims to connect across these often disparate sources.

Networks

FarmPEP aims to connect the many networks, communities and groups across Agriculture. Add your network as a Group and connect to the 'Networks' Topic to have your network show up below. 

Useful websites

What web resources do you find useful to find and share knowledge?

Farming Press & Newsletters

The farming press is a very important route to disseminating knowledge across the industry.  A range of newsletters serving a host of communities help keep people up to date. Share here sources of news and info that you find most useful.

CCRI - Countryside & Community Research Institute

An internationally excellent Research Institute” (REF, 2021). Shaping rural development policy and practice in the UK, Europe and further afield.

National Library for Agrifood - NLAF

The National Library for Agri-Food serves agri-food practitioners by providing access to recent, high quality, science-evidenced information and guidance in a well-constructed online repository with good metadata standards for easy searching and robust perma-links to content.

Knowledge Exchange

Knowledge Exchange in Agriculture in the UK is diverse, with many organisations involved. That is part of the reason for creating Farm-PEP, to help provide connections to what many percieve as a fragmented landscape.

Harper Adams University

As the population grows, so do our demands on the planet. Managing this resource has never been so important. Since it was founded in 1901, Harper has been designed to meet this challenge. Set on a 494 hectare farm, we are the leading specialist university tackling the future development of our planet's food production, processing, animal sciences, engineering, land management and sustainable business.

Policy

Policy plays a critical role in shaping the agriculture industry in the UK and Europe. Government policies can have a major impact on the way that farmers operate, the crops they grow, and the prices they receive for their products. Policy has a major effect on how land is managed and environmental outcomes.

Professional Development

Professional development is an important part of a career journey - an opportunity for continuous learning, a way to stay up-to-date and to demonstrate relevance and expertise. Professional development activities can be completed in a number of different ways, from attending a training course, an event or a meeting to taking part in a webinar, listening to a podcast, reading an industry magazine or being a professional member of an organisation. Those on the BASIS Professional Register, FACTS Qualifed Advisers, RoSA sheep advisers and those on the Environmental Advisers Register are all required to collect a certain number of CPD (continuous professional development) points on an annual basis to demonstrate their commitment to enhancing knowledge and skills.  For more information, please visit: https://basis-reg.co.uk/schemes.

CPM - Crop Production Magazine

The UK's best-read arable journal

Nuffield Farming Scholarships

The Nuffield Farming Scholarships Trust is a charity organisation whose aim is to bring positive change to agriculture through the development of its future leaders, sending them overseas to learn from others and helping them share their brilliant ideas when they return home.  

Organic Research Centre (ORC)

The Organic Research Centre (ORC) is the UK's leading independent organic research organisation. Changing the future of food and farming.

Guide to Farmers' Crop Trials

Guidance from ADAS Agronomics on how best to conduct Line Trials on farm.  

Pulse PEP
Rank Prize Funds

We bring together bright young researchers and the most eminent in their fields. We stimulate and support their work. Then we celebrate the breakthrough ideas that emerge, and the difference they make to the world.

Application of Science to Realise the Potential of the Agricultural Transition

Report by Lord Curry (Food & Farming Futures), James Lowenburg-DeBoer and Michael Lee (Harper Adams University) into how agricultural science and extension can be supported and co-ordinated to address the productivity gap in UK agriculture.    

GrowIN

Northern Ireland farmer-led innovation    

Riseholme College

Based in Lincolnshire, a specialist land-based college with a wide range of Further Education and Higher Education courses, from Agriculture and Equine to Sport and Food.

Local and farmers' knowledge matters! How integrating informal and formal knowledge enhances sustainable and resilient agriculture

Refereed paper in Journal of Rural Studies by Sandra Šūmane and colleagues (2018). 

TAPipedia: knowledge sharing hub on agricultural innovation (no need to register to access content)

Dear colleagues, since this group is about agricultural innovation, you might find useful to have

TMAF The Morley Agricultural Foundation

The Morley Agricultural Foundation is a charity that supports farming in the East of England by funding agricultural research, student studies, professional development of farmers and others and a variety of educational projects for school age children.

Food & Farming Futures F&FF

The independent, collaborative news and information source for farming and food

Innovation

Innovation in agriculture refers to the development and implementation of new ideas, technologies, and practices in the agricultural sector.

AKIS

The Agriculture Knowledge & Innovation System

EU Projects

A wide range of EU funded projects and networks contribute to the knowledge landscape in agriculture.

Newcastle University

EU Farmbook

EU FarmBook is a collection of vetted best practices for farmers & foresters. All content in the library is provided by Horizon research projects. 

National Farm Advice Network

Initiative led by Jenny Phelps to bring together farm advisors to enable joined up discussions and collaborations farm advice.

Reading University

Organic Farm Knowledge

Exchange knowledge, enhance organic farming.  Organic Farm Knowledge is a web platform dedicated to sharing practices on organic farming.

The University of Edinburgh

University of York

University of Aberdeen

Writtle University College

Put Science into Practice

Knowledge Exchange Hub - Farming Connect & IBERS

The Knowledge Exchange Hub is a joint collaboration between Farming Connect and IBERS, Aberystwyth University.

Earlham Institute

Kingshay

Whatever your challenges, from practical to strategic, Kingshay have the expertise to help you get the best from your farm.

LEAF Education and Public Engagement Pop-up Knowledge Hub

This exciting event offers a chance to connect and collaborate with fellow farmers, educators and the wider industry, whilst discovering and exploring the best in education and outreach in the agri-food sector.

Facilitating on farm trials. A FarmPEP workshop exploring their potential.

Join us to explore the pros and cons of facilitating farm trials.

Design guide for on-farm demonstrations

The demo design guide summarizes in 6 steps how to design an on-farm demonstration event, starting from a clear definition of the objectives and ending with a good evaluation and follow-up.

About text formats
Write whatever you want here - this is the main section. You can add links, add pictures and embed videos. To paste text from elsewhere use CTRL+Shift+V to paste without formatting. Add videos by selecting 'Full HTML' below, copying the 'embed html' from the source page (eg Youtube), clicking 'Source' above and pasting where you want the video to appear.
You can upload an image here. It can be jpg, jpeg, gif or png format.
Upload requirements
File

You can upload a file here, such as a pdf report, or MS Office documents, Excel spreadsheet or Powerpoint Slides.

Upload requirements
Authors Order
Add Authors here - you can only add them if they already exist on PEP. Just start writing their name then select to add it. To add multiple authors click the 'Add another item' button below.

Please ensure that you have proof-read your content. Pages are not edited further once submitted and will go live immediately.

Configure the meta tags below.

Use tokens to avoid redundant meta data and search engine penalization. For example, a 'keyword' value of "example" will be shown on all content using this configuration, whereas using the [node:field_keywords] automatically inserts the "keywords" values from the current entity (node, term, etc).

Browse available tokens.
Basic tags

Simple meta tags.

The text to display in the title bar of a visitor's web browser when they view this page. This meta tag may also be used as the title of the page when a visitor bookmarks or favorites this page, or as the page title in a search engine result. It is common to append '[site:name]' to the end of this, so the site's name is automatically added. It is recommended that the title is no greater than 55 - 65 characters long, including spaces.
A brief and concise summary of the page's content, preferably 150 characters or less. Where as the description meta tag may be used by search engines to display a snippet about the page in search results, the abstract tag may be used to archive a summary about the page. This meta tag is no longer supported by major search engines.
Advanced

Meta tags that might not be needed by many sites.

Geo-spatial information in 'latitude; longitude' format, e.g. '50.167958; -97.133185'; see Wikipedia for details.
Geo-spatial information in 'latitude, longitude' format, e.g. '50.167958, -97.133185'; see Wikipedia for details.
Robots
A comma-separated list of keywords about the page. This meta tag is used as an indicator in Google News.
Highlight standout journalism on the web, especially for breaking news; used as an indicator in Google News. Warning: Don't abuse it, to be used a maximum of 7 times per calendar week!
This meta tag communicates with Google. There are currently two directives supported: 'nositelinkssearchbox' to not to show the sitelinks search box, and 'notranslate' to ask Google not to offer a translation of the page. Both options may be added, just separate them with a comma. See meta tags that Google understands for further details.
Used to rate content for audience appropriateness. This tag has little known influence on search engine rankings, but can be used by browsers, browser extensions, and apps. The most common options are general, mature, restricted, 14 years, safe for kids. If you follow the RTA Documentation you should enter RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA
Indicate to search engines and other page scrapers whether or not links should be followed. See the W3C specifications for further details.
Sets a cookie on the visitor's browser. Can be in either NAME=VALUE format, or a more verbose format including the path and expiration date; see the link for full details on the syntax.
Tell search engines when to index the page again. Very few search engines support this tag, it is more useful to use an XML Sitemap file.
Control when the browser's internal cache of the current page should expire. The date must to be an RFC-1123-compliant date string that is represented in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), e.g. 'Thu, 01 Sep 2016 00:12:56 GMT'. Set to '0' to stop the page being cached entirely.
Open Graph

The Open Graph meta tags are used to control how Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and other social networking sites interpret the site's content.

The Facebook Sharing Debugger lets you preview how your content will look when it's shared to Facebook and debug any issues with your Open Graph tags.

The URL of an image which should represent the content. The image must be at least 200 x 200 pixels in size; 600 x 316 pixels is a recommended minimum size, and for best results use an image least 1200 x 630 pixels in size. Supports PNG, JPEG and GIF formats. Should not be used if og:image:url is used. Note: if multiple images are added many services (e.g. Facebook) will default to the largest image, not specifically the first one. Multiple values may be used, separated by a comma. Note: Tokens that return multiple values will be handled automatically. This will be able to extract the URL from an image field if the field is configured properly.
The URL of an video which should represent the content. For best results use a source that is at least 1200 x 630 pixels in size, but at least 600 x 316 pixels is a recommended minimum. Object types supported include video.episode, video.movie, video.other, and video.tv_show. Multiple values may be used, separated by a comma. Note: Tokens that return multiple values will be handled automatically.
A alternative version of og:image and has exactly the same requirements; only one needs to be used. Multiple values may be used, separated by a comma. Note: Tokens that return multiple values will be handled automatically. This will be able to extract the URL from an image field if the field is configured properly.
The secure URL (HTTPS) of an image which should represent the content. The image must be at least 200 x 200 pixels in size; 600 x 316 pixels is a recommended minimum size, and for best results use an image least 1200 x 630 pixels in size. Supports PNG, JPEG and GIF formats. Multiple values may be used, separated by a comma. Note: Tokens that return multiple values will be handled automatically. This will be able to extract the URL from an image field if the field is configured properly. Any URLs which start with "http://" will be converted to "https://".
The type of image referenced above. Should be either 'image/gif' for a GIF image, 'image/jpeg' for a JPG/JPEG image, or 'image/png' for a PNG image. Note: there should be one value for each image, and having more than there are images may cause problems.
The date this content was last modified, with an optional time value. Needs to be in ISO 8601 format. Can be the same as the 'Article modification date' tag.
Links an article to an author's Facebook profile, should be either URLs to the author's profile page or their Facebook profile IDs. Multiple values may be used, separated by a comma. Note: Tokens that return multiple values will be handled automatically.
The date this content was published on, with an optional time value. Needs to be in ISO 8601 format.
The date this content was last modified, with an optional time value. Needs to be in ISO 8601 format.
The date this content will expire, with an optional time value. Needs to be in ISO 8601 format.
Twitter Cards

A set of meta tags specially for controlling the summaries displayed when content is shared on Twitter.

Notes:
  • no other fields are required for a Summary card
  • Photo card requires the 'image' field
  • Media player card requires the 'title', 'description', 'media player URL', 'media player width', 'media player height' and 'image' fields,
  • Summary Card with Large Image card requires the 'Summary' field and the 'image' field,
  • Gallery Card requires all the 'Gallery Image' fields,
  • App Card requires the 'iPhone app ID' field, the 'iPad app ID' field and the 'Google Play app ID' field,
  • Product Card requires the 'description' field, the 'image' field, the 'Label 1' field, the 'Data 1' field, the 'Label 2' field and the 'Data 2' field.
A description that concisely summarizes the content of the page, as appropriate for presentation within a Tweet. Do not re-use the title text as the description, or use this field to describe the general services provided by the website. The string will be truncated, by Twitter, at the word to 200 characters.
By default Twitter tracks visitors when a tweet is embedded on a page using the official APIs. Setting this to 'on' will stop Twitter from tracking visitors.
The URL to a unique image representing the content of the page. Do not use a generic image such as your website logo, author photo, or other image that spans multiple pages. Images larger than 120x120px will be resized and cropped square based on longest dimension. Images smaller than 60x60px will not be shown. If the 'type' is set to Photo then the image must be at least 280x150px. This will be able to extract the URL from an image field if the field is configured properly.
The MIME type for the media contained in the stream URL, as defined by RFC 4337.