Agriculture
Research Topic
Language: English
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Research problems linked to this topic
- How can we optimise the food system to support future food production and consumption sustainably whilst reducing environmental impacts?
- How can we encourage the development and dissemination of innovations in the agri-environment sector? What are the right conditions for success?
- What are the changes that will affect the quality and availability of agricultural land and how will these affect UK’s food and farming systems?
- What data and evidence are needed to inform policy and delivery and what are the best sources to meet these needs? How can we improve broad access to this data and enhance knowledge exchange across the agri-food industry?
- How will agriculture affect the resilience to climate change of surrounding habitats and communities- for example water availability, flooding, land use change, chemical harm on ecosystem functions related to climate resilience?
- As well as modelling and understanding major land use change (for example from agriculture to forestry), how can we understand the effects of more subtle changes in land management across wide areas (for example changing tillage practice)?
- How do we respond effectively to challenges including a rapidly growing population, changing consumption trends, finite land use, resource constraints, changing climate, globalised markets, and black swan events such as COVID-19 all of which impact on food and farming system security and supply chain resilience?
- How can we best supply healthy safe sustainable affordable food that commands consumer confidence and meets the needs of all consumers (including vulnerable groups)?
- How will crop, livestock, and woodland resilience alter in the future, impacting optimal agricultural and forestry practices for the UK? What practices and policies can we develop to drive adaptation?
- What capability and capacity in the food and farming industry is needed to deliver future rural community policy needs?
- Which practises can most effectively reduce emissions of GHG (including CH4 and N2O) from agriculture, waste, and wastewater, land-use, and F-gases in the UK and internationally?
- What are the real-world barriers that prevent land-users (for example farmers) taking up low/negative carbon measures, and how can these be overcome? How can we improve the estimation and validation of take up for these practices?
- How can the UK optimise sustainable growth of biomass for use in power generation (bioenergy) and, with appropriate storage, for removal of atmospheric CO2? How can the negative environmental consequences from biomass production and use (on soil quality, water quality, air quality, and biodiversity) be minimised? What’s the full life cycle analysis for different feedstock? What’s the scalability of different feedstocks within sustainable limits?
- How do we minimize the risk of plant and animal disease import to the UK as traded products change, and as the UK goes through a period of significant change in its international trading arrangements post-EU and post COVID-19?
- What are the likely changes to our agricultural sector following COVID-19 and how can the agricultural system transition be best guided towards a sustainable trajectory while ensuring food security?
- How do we future proof farming and food chains to global shocks? What is the potential for wild relatives, landraces, and orphan varieties to increase diversity and enhance resilience?