born of the YEN and open to all
Farm-PEP has the vision of taking the farm-centred Action Research approaches developed in the YENs and Agronomics of and making tools available to support any group of farmers, advisors, industry and researchers addressing any issue in agriculture.
Our approach is summarised by the four pillars of 1. Shared Knowledge; 2. Shared data; 3. Shared ideas & 4. Co-ordinated tests in the figure below:
With the help of two Innovate UK projects and a wide set of partners we are co-designing tools to help support each of these pillars. The first is developing a knowledge exchange platform at www.farmpep.net to enable anyone to share and access relevant knowledge. The second enables groups to come together, easily share data, interactively compare metrics through Dynamic Benchmarking and run robust Farm Trials.
Initial Project
The funding call 'UKRI Ideas to address Covid-19' Innovate UK supported an ADAS-led consortium to assess the impact of Covid-19 on knowledge exchange in agriculture, and to develop the Farm-PEP web solution at www.farmpep.net. The initial Farm-PEP project began in January 2021 and runs to February 2022.
Partners
Impact of Covid on Knowledge Exchange
The University of Gloucester’s Countryside & Community Research Institute (CCRI) in the first five months of 2021 led a rapid appraisal of the impact of Covid19 on knowledge exchange in agriculture, using workshops, surveys, and interviews across the industry. The summary report is available here with full details here. This work was used to define the challenge statement below.
The Challenge
COVID-19 has changed knowledge exchange with a significant increase in the adoption of digital tools. While online delivery offers scale and convenience, farmers and KE practitioners can be overwhelmed by content volume, fail to translate information into useful knowledge, and suffer from online fatigue. They would like to be able to...
- Ensure information is authentic and reliable
- Filter out the noise and find what they want easily
- Choose from a variety of delivery and learning approaches
- Collaborate and interact effectively
- Engage at a level that recognises their digital skills and abilities
- Receive coaching and guidance for effective online delivery
- Work synergistically with face-to-face delivery
...so that robust information can be translated into practice change at scale, to enable the UK agriculture sector to realise increased productivity and profitability in a sustainable way
Co-designing www.farmpep.net knowledge platform
Since summer 2021 we have been co-designing the Farm-PEP web platform, aiming to connect people and projects, integrate tools and initiatives, and provide an online community space for knowledge sharing. It will be open to all to share & discuss activities, ideas, and findings, to develop collaborations, coordinate testing on-farm, and distill robust messages.
We are making our ideas available for comment at www.farmpep.net, and we have a short survey seeking your views. Please get involved, or get in touch with Sarah.Clarke@adas.co.uk.
The aim is to develop farmpep.net through the autumn and launch in the New Year with a commercial business model.
New Farm-PEP project
From October 2021 we have started a larger 2 year project to develop tools to support farmers, advisors and the industry in knowledge generation and sharing. This is funded by Defra and UKRI Farming Innovation Pathways programme.
Partners
Plans
The new project will:
- utilise the knowledge sharing functionality being developed at www.farmpep.net
- develop data exchange of agronomic data from farm management software (Map of Ag)
- develop Dynamic Benchmarking for a range of metrics and filters (ADAS)
- develop Farm Trials Tool (BGS & ADAS)
- develop best approaches for facilitating co-learning groups (Innovative Farmers & AICC)
- initiate Crop Nutrition Clubs
You can read and see more about our vision for Farm-PEP from this paper and video presented at the OFE2021 conference in October 2021.
If you would like to get involved in co-designing Farm-PEP then please get in touch.