🤯 What a way to start this #Nuffield adventure - thank you Robbie Moore and Henry Alexander for speaking with us all in 10 Downing Street this morning.
🌏 Over the next year or so, I will be documenting what I learn and see on my Nuffield Farming Scholarships Trust travels here on LinkedIn. (Please also follow Soil Benchmark for updates on the progess we are making with our software - pleased to say that on Saturday we went through the milestone of 200,000ha on the platform since we launched last November - we will be celebrating by offering a promo period to everyone next week!)
For my Nuffield, i'm going to be digging into how good ideas about soil management are best shared in other countries. It's really this concept of sharing - "knowledge exhange" in the jargon - between farms that i'm most interested in. It seems there are no shortage of innovative farmers, here in the UK and around the world, developing brilliant, soil-friendly farming practices. But why are those good ideas not always then taken up by other farmers.
Historically, farming has been better at this than most other industries. There have been less of the competititive instincts towards secrecy - as Nicholas Saphir reminded us this afternoon, Agricultural Societies (such as the Yorkshire Agricultural Society, the generous sponsors of my Nuffield) originally helped to share the new ideas that drove the 2nd Agricultural Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries in the UK. But it seems that this level of sharing in not necessarily happening today in the UK.
I really want to dig into why this is, and what we can learn from other countries who have different systems which encourage one farm's good ideas about soil management to be taken up by others. In Australia i'll be looking at grower groups and how they have become a key force in helping shape the research agenda over there. In France I want to undestand how the powerful co-ops play a similar role. In the US, it's the Land Grant Universities which I want to explore. And in Denmark, it's the role of farm advisors and SEGES Innovation.
But before all that, all the 2024 Nuffield Scholars - from all over the world - are heading out to Campo Grande in Brazil for the 'Contemporary Scholars Conference' which will kick off our travels officially. I for one can't wait - particularly because I'm going to be sharing this rollercoaster journey with the most amazing gang of people you could hope for: Amy Stoner, Dr Saba Erum, Laura Awdry, Wallace Currie, Lucy George, Jock Gibson, Sophie (Aplin) Gregory, Liz Haines, Rachel Yarrow, Polly Hilton, Dan Jones, Hattie McFadzean, Gwion Parry, ifan roberts, Dan Smith, Jamie Stokes, David Tavernor, Sam Watson Jones, Cormac White, Annie Williams, Harry Winslet, Natalie Hepburn
