Innovative Farmers was established in 2012 by the Soil Association with the aim of bringing scientific rigour to on-farm trials co-designed by farmers and researchers. With a focus on sustainability and resilience, groups come together on discrete topics and on-farm trials addressing the topics that matter to them.

Innovative Farmers is a network of farmers and growers who are running on-farm trials, on their own terms. These field labs have increased farmers’ confidence in on-farm experimentation and innovation. They have also highlighted to the research community the benefits of collaboration with farmers.  

Since its launch in 2012 Innovative Farmers has nurtured a culture of sharing across the farming industry and seen an increased recognition of the value of on-farm trials.

Primarily funded by The Prince of Wales's Charitable Fund the network has a grants programme to cover up to £10k of the trial costs and organises a programme of events and knowledge exchange activities over the year.

Explore the latest field labs and find out more about what the network has learned so far: https://www.innovativefarmers.org/

To join the network or share an idea for a field lab contact the team or follow us on twitter @IFarmers

Related Organisations

Connected Content

Share your views on how we can improve Farmpep.net

This Topic doesn't yet have a Stewarded summary, but connected groups, content and organisations show below. Click the 'Ask to Join' button if you would like to be a Steward for this Topic and provide a summary of current knowledge and recommend useful resources, organisations, networks and projects.

The initial Farm-PEP project funded under the Innovate UK competition 'UKRI Ideas to address Covid-19'.  ADAS led consortium to assess the impact of Covid-19 on knowledge exchange in agriculture, and to develop the Farm-PEP web solution at www.farmpep.net. The initial Farm-PEP project began in January 2021 and ran to February 2022.

The Farmer-Led Innovation Network (FLIN) are UK based organisations driving farmer-led innovation - working together to power up and increase the impact of farmer led innovation initiatives.

The intricate web of relationships between physical, chemical and biological soil components underpins crop and livestock health and productivity.

The Farming and Land Use Team at the Soil Association have a specialist knowledge of all UK agricultural sectors as well as in depth understanding of organic and agroecological food production systems. Our goal is to support organic and non-organic farmers alike to transition towards more sustainable practices.

The ideas behind Farm-PEP came together in ~2018, drawing from the developments of Agronomics, the YENs, AHDB's Monitor Farm programme and the idea of a 'What Works' Centre for Agriculture. 

Farm-centric research generally involves On-Farm Experimentation and may be better described as 'Farm Action Research', i.e. research conducted at least in part by and for beneficiaries who also farm. 

Farmers, advisors and researchers working together to understand and improve crop nutrition on-farm

Inferring the right conclusions from field trials is important - how confident can you be that a result is 'real' rather than due to the underlying noise? As part of the Farm-PEP FIP project we are working with BGS to explore the best ways to communicate confidence, uncertainty, significance, probability and value with farmers and growers.

How should we ensure the long term growth and development of the PEP platform and community?  Give us your ideas here

An Innovative Farmers Field Lab with four sheepers farmers working with ADAS has shown that long-held fears of red clover in herbal leys affecting fertility in sheep are unfounded, with the findings that inclusion of the legume can even have a positive effect on pregnancy rates.

A new Field Lab from Innovative Farmers investigating how farmers can better harness the power of flowers to fight pests.

Innovative Farmers has now been running for a decade, facilitating farmer-led research to some of

Scientific paper looking at the relationships between scientists and farmers:

Agricultural research is conducted by a range of organisations, from individual farmers, through advisors, distributors, manufacturers, charities, societies, supply chain companies, levy bodies, universities and research institutes.  This page aims to connect across these often disparate sources.

FarmPEP aims to connect the many networks, communities and groups across Agriculture. Add your network as a Group and connect to the 'Networks' Topic to have your network show up below. 

The development of Farm-PEP Performance Enhancement Partnerships to support on-farm knowledge generation through shared ideas, data and experimentation. Funded as part of Farming Innovation Pathways programme from Defra and Innovate UK Transforming Food Production.

Knowledge Exchange in Agriculture in the UK is diverse, with many organisations involved. That is part of the reason for creating Farm-PEP, to help provide connections to what many percieve as a fragmented landscape.

Many of the most telling innovations that make a difference on-farm come from farmers themselves, or from close collaboration between farmers, advisors, industry and researchers

This Innovative Farmers Field Lab investigated defoliation as a control for cabbage stem flea beetle (CSFB) larval populations in oilseed rape. It worked with eight farmers to look at the potential for controlling cabbage stem flea beetle by mowing and grazing OSR crops

Pasture Optimisation for Resilience and Livelihoods (PASTORAL) will work with farmers to co-design a new digital platform to help improve data to inform on-farm decision making to increase farm productivity and carbon efficiency using satellite data to plan pasture management.    

Devon silvopasture 12-year on-farm trial including site at Rothamsted's North Wyke

H3

‘Healthy soil, Healthy food and Healthy people’

This field lab was initiated as part of the ADAS project ‘Investigating the distribution and presence, and potential for herbicide resistance of UK brome species in arable farming’, funded by AHDB.  

Innovation for Agriculture (IfA) is an independent knowledge exchange charity that aims to bridge the gap between science and practice. 

Guidance from ADAS Agronomics on how best to conduct Line Trials on farm.  

Results from an Innovative Farmers Field Lab with University of Lincoln and Anglian Water showed benefits from drilling rather than broadcasting to establish a catch crop.   

Innovative Farmers, as part of their involvement in the Horizon Europe LEGUMINOSE project we will be setting up trials with Reading University to look at the benefits of intercropping in arable rotations.

Tree forage has many nutritional benefits for livestock as it diversifies their diet, provides additional nutrients and contains tannins that reduce methane production. Dr Lindsay Whistance from Organic Research Centre offers her advice on the best trees for silvopasture in a recent Innovative Farmers blog. 

ADAS have produced a new guide with our five top tips for successful on-farm trials. We'd love you to give it a try and to hear about what products or approaches you're testing on farm - by sharing the results of trials, we can learn more together.

  Join with members of the Innovative Farmers network past and present for an insp

Network of farmers advisors and researchers working together, sharing ideas and data and testing solutions to increase soil carbon

Farmer Innovation Group as part of YEN Yield Testing project on achieving Deeper Rooting. Encouragement of deep burrowing earthworms might enhance yields by enabling deeper rooting, and capture of more sub-soil water.

This Field Lab explores the impact of grazing sheep on over-winter cover crops on soil properties, crop performance and the management of livestock within an arable rotation.

Group coming out of the YEN looking at ways to increase deep rooting, by encouraging deep burrowing earthworms.

This field lab's objective is to investigate the potential of living mulches, creating a permanent clover understory to suppress weeds, cycle nutrients, protect and enhance soil health, as a means to achieving organic and low-input no-till systems - that can be more sustainable than those systems they seek to replace.

A group of farmers is investigating with Harper Adams University how trap crops such as sticky and African nightshade can be used as a biological management practice.

Farmers in south west Engalnd are trialling a diverse (16 variety) mix against their current systems of monoculture winter brassicas used for grazing outwintering livestock. Supported by FWAG, they will measure changes in soil health, biodiversity and monitor forage quality and yield

A trial site in Suffolk investigated a range of management techniques, including time of sowing f