Working to ensure sustainable, resilient & healthy food supplies for all
N8 AgriFood has officially launched its Food Systems Policy Hub as it looks to demonstrate real world impact from interdisciplinary research through policy intervention and guidance.
Policy impact has been a strategic area of focus for N8 AgriFood following its inaugural Policy Focus Week last year, with the programme harnessing expertise from across multiple disciplines over its eight member institutions, covering all aspects of the food chain.
Two N8 AgriFood institutions have joined forces to successfully win a share of BBSRC’s latest £14 million funding call.
The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) selected four teams of investigators in the UK after a call for researchers who would carry out long-term, large-scale and interdisciplinary programmes with the ambitious goal of discovering new rules of life.
Among the successful bids is ‘SUMOcode: deciphering how SUMOylation enables plants to adapt to their environment’.
N8 AgriFood has teamed up with digital publisher Emerald to launch a Food Systems collection on the Emerald Open Research platform.
Emerald Publishing launched its Open Research platform as a new and pioneering way of rapidly publishing a range of research outputs, from original research articles to case studies and date notes. With open peer review controlled by the author and an open date policy, the aim was to make research available to ready,
With food partnerships flourishing in regions across the UK, there is growing interest and timely focus on driving innovation and best practice in all aspects of a healthy, more equitable and sustainable food system.
Engagement between researchers and practitioners working across related themes is also growing.
This engagement can occur on many levels ranging from motivated academics who are personally involved in partnerships through to formal collaboration between universities and partnerships.
The UK has been left “dangerously dependent” on just two EU countries for its fresh vegetable imports, a new study on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the UK food system has revealed.
The study, published in Nature Food, also reveals that insufficient capacity in domestic food production, just-in-time supply chains and Brexit-related labour market challenges have all resulted in a weakened UK food system.
Building diversity and collaboration in the food system is essential for resilience in the COVID-19 recovery,
Across the N8 university cities, food partnerships have been emerging, growing and flourishing. Academic institutions play an important role in supporting and working in partnership with local initiatives.
Over the coming months, we will be sharing stories of how our N8 community is working to develop collaboration locally and exploring the different approaches taken to support this.
In the first of these stories, we hear from Lancaster and their food partnership FoodFutures.
The expertise of academics from the N8 AgriFood programme has helped the UK Government as it considers next steps for the food system amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Thursday 30 April 2020, Professor Bob Doherty, Professor of Marketing and N8 AgriFood Chair at the University of York, and Professor Fiona Smith, Professor of International Economic Law and N8 Chair in AgriFood Regulation at the University of Leeds, gave oral testimony to the House of Commons International Trade Committee.
The House of Commons International Trade Committee has appointed N8 AgriFood’s Chair at the University of York, Professor Tony Heron, as its new Parliamentary Academic Fellow.
For the next two years, Professor Heron will spend two days per week working in Parliament with the International Trade Select Committee, which is tasked by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the Department for International Trade (DIT) and its associated public bodies.
Researchers and practitioners working to improve access to sustainable and nutritious food in communities across the North of England are being brought together to form a new knowledge-sharing hub as part of N8 AgriFood’s Sustainable Food Communities Cluster.
N8 AgriFood launched its Cluster initiative earlier this year in a bid to pull together expertise from across its eight member universities in specific areas of food to collectively form a platform with organisations (inc.
N8 AgriFood’s Urban Agriculture Cluster hosted industry representatives and researchers from across the North of England for its first Innovation Visit.
The Cluster initiative was set up earlier this year to pull together expertise from across N8 AgriFood in specific areas to drive innovation and collaboration with industry.
The Urban Agriculture Cluster was the first to be launched, and this month it held its inaugural Innovation Visit to Stockbridge Technology Centre (STC).