IKnowFood

IKnowFood is a four year project led by Professor Bob Doherty (The York Management School and the York Environmental Sustainability Institute, YESI) with collaborators from across the University of York and the Universities of Liverpool and Manchester. The project is funded by the Global Food Security Programme.

The overarching aim of the programme is to deepen understanding of the stresses and risks facing the UK food system in order to improve its resilience by taking an interdisciplinary approach to create positive social and environmental change within the UK Food System.

IKnowFood on-farm
One programme of work focuses entirely on farmers and on-farm research.  It is designed to develop new methods which ensure the knowledge, skills and interests of farmers are integrated into an innovation system capable of achieving and sustaining productivity gains today and in the future.

This is accomplished by bringing together farmers, scientists and engineers in discussion groups to better understand how a process of shared learning can support the development and subsequent adoption of farming innovations, and to create on-farm knowledge and low-cost sensor and automation technologies that enable farmers to manage the risks associated with production and natural resource management.

There are currently two established farmer groups based in Yorkshire and Scotland. See here for some examples of technological innovations that form part of the farmer group discussions.

This research is carried out in partnership with Innovative Farmers (a consortium of LEAF, Innovation for Agriculture, the Organic Research Centre and the Soil Association), the Yorkshire Agricultural Society (YAS), and the e-Agri group at the University of Manchester.

Further information 
For information on the rest of this project visit here. Further information on the farming element of this project can be found on the relevant pages of the IKnowFood website here.