Northern Ireland farmer-led innovation

 

 

The Growing Innovation Network is an Ashden Trust funded project, delivered by the Food Farming & Countryside Commission through a team of grassroots farmers in Northern Ireland. The team is made up of Jim McAdam, Michael Meharg, Sam Millar, Helen Keys and William Frazer, all rooted in the Northern Ireland farming community.

Mission: Inspiring innovation in Northern Ireland farming from the grassroots up through a shared, inclusive and accessible farmer-led network for inspiration, information and collaboration. Learning from and empowering each other with confidence to explore new enterprises/approaches to tackle the food, climate, nature and health crises facing society.

To be developed by farmers for farmers, creating a culture of trust, unity and positive action across the farming industry of Northern Ireland. Learning from the best of farmer-to-farmer learning networks from elsewhere and existing networks within Northern Ireland to create a shared network for collaboration and discussion that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Initial priorities:

  • The improvement of soil health across the farmed landscape

  • The adoption of more resilient grassland management and livestock grazing systems

  • Incorporating traditional methods of fertility building and circular systems back into farming practice and coupled with latest knowledge and technology building up a landscape of modern mixed farming

  • Incorporating trees into productive farming systems through agroforestry

  • Diversifying the Northern Ireland production base through the expansion of cereal, fibre and horticultural crop production

Related Organisations

Connected Content

Farm-PEP aims to bring together all the sources of useful knowledge for Agriculture, whether from academic science, applied research projects, industry trials, farmers own trials or simple on-farm experience. Listed below are useful websites, organisations and websites that we know of.  Add any we've missed in the comments box or by adding as new content, or better still, as a new Group.  

Building the right skills for the agricultural industry has been recognised as crucial to its future success.

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. 

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.

We work to bring together unusual combinations of voices in order to devise a range of practical actions that can have significant impact on our climate, nature, health and economy.