Innovation village plan boosts morale

ONE potential giant boon for the West’s farming sector is last week’s unveiling of proposals for a £100 million initiative in Gloucestershire.

Plans for the UK’s first sustainable agricultural innovation village were launched last Friday. The £100m development being proposed by the Royal Agricultural University (RAU) would support farmers and landowners to develop solutions for food production, healthy land, biodiversity loss and heritage management.

The university wants to transform a 29-acre site at its Cirencester campus into a community of entrepreneurs, policymakers, practitioners and researchers. Proposals for the site include a research and innovation centre; livework residential units; business start-up and support spaces; and business and conferencing hospitality facilities.

According to the RAU, the initiative already has the support of the Department of International Trade (DIT), Gloucestershire County Council and GFirst LEP.

RAU vice-chancellor Professor Peter McCaffery said: “Our innovation village will turbo-charge SME agri-tech enterprise activity with a distinctively rural feel. We anticipate we’ll increase the RAU’s current contribution of £52m to the local and regional economy by half as much again over five years when the project is up and running.”

Dame Fiona Reynolds, chair of the RAU’s Governing Council, said: “As well as benefiting the Royal Agricultural University, as a global centre for the future of sustainable farming and food production, this will also benefit the people of Cirencester and other local communities. We’re determined that the innovation village will be green and beautiful and, importantly, led by the landscape which inspires us daily. It will reflect our core values as well as inspire intellectual, community, and collaborative working.” billion (at 2021 prices). A further high point was between 1992 and 1996 where profits were £6.9 billion on average.

Farmers across the West will be hoping planning and funding can be secured swiftly so that the region’s agricultural sector starts reaping its benefit.

“Our forecast for 2023 currently sees UK farming profits dropping by up to a third. This puts them towards £3 billion in real terms – levels last seen in the difficult years around the turn of the millennium. Our, very tentative, forecasts for 2024 show some improvement based on reduced energy costs.”

Mr King concludes: “If our forecasts prove correct, after a run of quite profitable years, the UK farming sector faces more difficult times.”

Wiltshire beef farmer and National Farmers’ Union (NFU) president Minette

Batters, inset, urged the government to step up efforts to support British farming in her New Year message.

She wrote: “Nobody could have predicted what we’ve witnessed in the past 12 months. From the war in Ukraine, which has created global turmoil and significantly disrupted food and energy supply chains, to our own political upheavals.

“On top of that we’ve had soaring input costs and the effects of climate change demonstrated by this year’s drought. The challenges faced by us all have been unprecedented.

“2022 has been an extraordinary year. I am hopeful that 2023 will be the year that the government gets serious about British food and farming and that the government delivers the policies and support needed for us to thrive domestically and around the world.”

The Country Land and Business

Association had a similar message, with senior public affairs manager Eleanor Wood calling for political stability in 2023 in her own New Year’s message.

She said: “After a tumultuous 12 months in politics, I don’t think anyone can blame me for hoping 2023 is quieter and we get back to ‘boring’ politics. Boring does have its merits, though, because it means the machinery of government is operating correctly and there are opportunities to improve things for our members. The stagnation of 2022 left many policy areas in limbo due to the lack of information on agricultural reform in England and a shake-up of the planning system in the Levelling Up Bill. The lack of clarity regarding the Environmental Land Management schemes has left many members frustrated and resulted in reduced uptake in the schemes because people don’t know what is involved in them.”