Farmers now have access to a wide range of modern farm management support tools and services. Smart farming refers to an approach which applies in-depth and frequently collected data with real-time processing to provide information for agricultural decision making.
Climate change, both projected and realised, impacts on livestock production – and livestock impacts on climate change, both here in Scotland and globally. Changing weather patterns can affect livestock directly, in terms of heat and cold stress, availability of food and water, and dictates what can be raised where and when. Climatic change also affects the prevalence, seasonality and geographic spread of livestock diseases.
Beef production is very important for Scotland's economy (economic output of £851 million in 2017) and for providing the high quality and iconic, ‘Scotch Beef’ brand. Feed for livestock represents 70-80% of the variable costs of beef production and an improvement of feed conversion efficiency is needed to keep the beef industry economically viable.
Take a look our visualization of the network of researchers in the Scottish Government’s Strategic Research Programme (SRP) as an illustration of just how complicated things can get! The image shows the complex connections between the researchers involved in the SRP (the bigger the node or circle - the bigger the level of interaction and lines represent linkages).
Food and Drink is a hugely important sector for Scotland and the UK economy, generating a turnover of £14.4 billion and £5.3 billion of GVA (gross value added) for the Scottish economy in 2014 alone. This sector not only has an impact on Scotland’s economy but food production can also has a significant influence on our environment, health and society and these are all areas that SEFARI research aims to a make a difference.
You may be wondering what we can do to help? Well, at the Centre for Sustainable Cropping (CSC) near Dundee, we’re aiming to develop a cropping system that can produce high quality food, whilst still maintaining a healthy environment. This means using what we understand about ecology to work with the environment to improve the health and physical structure of the soil, minimise the losses of nutrients and chemicals from cultivated fields, and support a rich variety of farmland wildlife.
Leaving the European Union could have major repercussions on a wide range of environmental and land use concerns within Scotland, and across the whole of the UK. Whilst some of these issues may seem complex, it is increasingly recognised that SEFARI contains a wealth of expertise which can contribute to such discussions. Of course our place is not to delve into the politics, but to use our research and expertise to provide an evidence-led platform for discussion.
There is no doubt we live in an ever evolving and developing world. That brings huge challenges, and only by understanding our world better can we make the best informed decisions across policy and commercial spheres, and in our own lives. Data sets, comprising the ultimate sources of the facts on which to base analyses, are fundamental to how we understand the world around us.
Our ongoing project at Glen Finglas has shown how sensitive biodiversity is to changing upland management. To maintain consistency, we have used the same monitoring methods since the beginning of the project. However, one of the benefits of long-term projects is that new technology emerges and can be incorporated to allow more detailed understanding to be developed.
Over the past decade, the European Commission has invested in a series of measures designed to support innovation in agriculture through networking all those involved in Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System (AKIS): farmers, advisors, supply chain members, NGOs and researchers.