Bid to bring back the lynx rejected
A bid to bring back the lynx, which became extinct in the UK more than 1,000 years ago, has been rejected by the UK Government. Lynx UK Trust applied for a licence for a trial reintroduction of six Eurasian lynx, which it says disappeared from Britain around the year 700AD, into Kielder Forest in Northumberland.
The cats were lost from much of western Europe in the face of the destruction of its habitat and persecution by humans.
With 28 “satellite” farms – eight of them in Scotland – now set up around the UK, the stage is set for new technologies to be tested, displayed and explained at farm rather than laboratory level.
The agri-epi-programme is designed to encourage the development, testing and sharing of technologies which will help boost productivity in farming and the food supply chain.
While the clumsily named organisation–agri-engineering, Precision and Innovation – is still relatively unknown in the farming world, its recently appointed farms and commercial manager, Gavin Dick, said that with the groundwork now complete, the initiative is set to move centre stage with the aim of bridging the gap between research and farmer uptake of new technologies.
The initiative is part of the £150 million Agri-tech strategy funded by the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) announced in 2013 with the aim of correcting what many had viewed as the handicap suffered by UK farmers following several decades of neglect and underfunding in this area of research and development.
Dick – a well known face in the farming industry, having led the practical side of the Agricultural and Horticultural Development Board’s (AHDB) cereals and oilseeds sector in Scotland – said that the satellite farms would be a key part of the AGRIEPI centre’s approach: “A number of well-regarded commercial farms have been given access to a range of data sensing equipment – including access to satellite imagery,
drones and digital weather stations – to start gathering base-line information on all aspects of their operations.”
He added that this included everything from the quality and health of the soils and animals to the management regimes used as well as detailed records on the weather and other key factors – and while they would be available free to the farmer, they would also be made available for research and development. And with a whole range of farm types, covering everything from pure arable units to hill livestock, pig, poultry and potato farms and everything in between, a huge amount of information would be gathered and those proposing new technologies could key into this and assess their innovations against existing practices:
“There will also be an element of sense-checking of the practicalities of new technologies carried out by the farmer partners as well – as they can often highlight areas which might be missed by someone more used to working in the more academic setting of a research facility.”
But farmers will also be able to key into new technologies earlier by faster development – and Dick suggested that with facilities available for group visits, the satellite farms would be able to host meetings of monitor farms and other production-focused farm groups:
“It has been said that as far as improving farm productivity is concerned all the low hanging fruit of has already been picked,” said Dick.