Science could cultivate big rewards for farmers

Feb 19 2009 by Andrew Mernin, The Journal

FARMERS of the future may spend more time in the lab than at the wheel of a combine harvester, as they look to meet the rapidly-changing demands of food and energy consumers.

That seemed to be the suggestion at the recent Great North Meet in Newcastle, which saw farmers from Cumbria to the Scottish border gather to discuss the uncertain future of agriculture.

Regional development agency One North East’s head of rural affairs Frances Rowe called on universities and colleges to work more closely with the farming community by sharing results of their agricultural-based scientific studies.

And if they do as Ms Rowe hopes, scientists in the region could present North East farmers with huge opportunities in the coming years.

She said that research, currently underway at various universities, into calculating a crop’s carbon footprint would offer farmers new revenue streams in challenging times ahead.

“People are worried about the environmental effects of their diet [and] it is my belief that further down the track, a consumer could go into Tesco, pick up a loaf and know exactly what its carbon footprint is. It could provide real business opportunities for farmers,” she added.

She also predicted that developing special crops for people with health-related diseases, like diabetes and heart disease, would also be a growing future market for farmers – but only if they liaise more closely with the science world.

Ms Rowe cited tests currently being carried out in Australia on crops with low starch content, which cater for diabetics, as an example of how farmers could tap into changing market trends in the future.

She said: “Farmers in the industry are going to need new skills in order to continue to meet a very challenging and demanding market place. I’d like to see the universities and colleges thinking about how they can help networks of farmers in ways that are practical to access this knowledge and to share their individual findings.”

Dr Paul Bilsborrow, a senior lecturer at Newcastle University’s School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, agrees that scientists will play an increasingly important role in agriculture in the future.

He is currently involved in building an out-reach programme in conjunction with One North East aimed at teaching farmers about the potentially lucrative biogas sector.

He said: “We have been trying to build a programme as a vehicle to engage with farmers in terms of the opportunities of using land to produce renewable energy.

“Farmers need to know what the potential [of an area of scientific study] is and what the financial and environmental implications are. There needs to be greater communication between them and us.”

AGRICULTURAL scientists at North East universities may well hold the key to the future success of farming in the region, although it may be some time before their endeavours impact directly on farming practices.

However, in the more immediate term, scientists in the region did make a breakthrough earlier this year which could boost farming coffers significantly – they discovered how to get more milk out of a cow. And the secret to the formula does not involve complicated machinery or mind-boggling mathematical equations, but merely a name. Scientists at Newcastle University found that giving a cow a name and treating it as an individual can increase her annual milk yield by almost 500 pints. The study discovered that, where each cow was called by her name, the overall milk yield was higher than on farms where the cattle were herded as a group.

Dr Catherine Douglas, who carried out the research with Dr Peter Rowlinson, said: “Just as people respond better to the personal touch, cows also feel happier and more relaxed if they are given a bit more one-to-one attention.”