The Royal Agricultural University (RAU) has joined forces with an award-winning regenerative farming business to make the university’s teaching farm fully regenerative.
In an attempt to tackle the increasing adverse effects of climate change on UK farming, the universities two farms are now being run in a collaboration between the university and local farmer, SS Horton and Sons.
The university said the change in farming system, which includes a more diverse crop rotation, a range of cover crops, grazing cover crops with livestock, and direct drilling has enabled RAU students to gain experience in a wider range of farm management techniques.
Ed Horton, RAU alumnus and partner at SS Horton and Sons, said: “We are aiming for the RAU’s farming operation to be a guide to regenerative agriculture at scale.”
Regenerative farming focuses on enhancing soil health.
It uses a combination of practices including maintaining soil cover, integrating crop and livestock enterprises, maintaining living roots in the soil, practicing diverse crop rotations, and minimal soil disturbance to build organic matter.
This, in turn, stabilises the soil and helps to reduce erosion as well as creating diverse soil microbiomes and decreasing the risk of environmental stress.
The university stated that regenerative farming is a key step towards developing resilient farming systems which can cope with extreme weather conditions and a changing climate.
RAU agriculture professor Nicola Cannon, who oversees teaching at Manor Farm, said: “The RAU is at the forefront of both education and research to find solutions to the challenges currently facing the agricultural industry,”
Our Manor Farm site provides a vital canvas for our teaching as well as our research projects and links with the agricultural industry.”
The university is also working with Zerodig, a social enterprise that has established a 7ac site on land adjoining the campus. Previously a conventional arable field, the site is being converted to grow horticulture alongside some experimental plots using the Zerodig method.
RAU students are involved in all aspects of Zerodig and the planting schedules for this season are currently being finalised to match the University’s catering requirements for the next year.
Professor Cannon added: “Both these partnerships help us to provide real time examples of regenerative farming practices and sustainable food production systems to teach students across a wide range of our courses.
“Basically, it’s win-win and absolutely what, as an agricultural university, we should be doing,” she continued.
