monitor farm

Building the right skills for the agricultural industry has been recognised as crucial to its future success.

Education and skills are provided by a range of providers, from training courses (eg City & Guilds NPTC & Lantra), professional development (eg NRoSO and BASIS), colleges and universities.

Connect here with important providers of education and skills for UK agriculture.

BASIS offers a range of training courses for advisers, farmers and land managers at all levels, from agronomy and nutrition to soil, water and biodiversity.  

The Institue for Agriculture and Horticulture (TIAH) has recently been set up as the industry's professional body

Related Organisations

Content below is from across the PEP community and is not necessarily endorsed by Stewards or by PEP

Connected Content

Knowledge

Farm-PEP aims to bring together all the sources of useful knowledge for Agriculture, whether from academic science, applied research projects, industry trials, farmers own trials or simple on-farm experience. Listed below are useful websites, organisations and websites that we know of.  Add any we've missed in the comments box or by adding as new content, or better still, as a new Group.  

Agricultural Universities Council (AUC-UK)

The Agricultural Universities Council (AUC-UK) is a collaboration of the UK universities with agricultural schools or departments. AUC-UK works together to coordinate our teaching and research, to make the biggest contribution we can to a resilient and sustainable future for agriculture, land management and food systems.

BASIS

BASIS is a charitable organisation committed to independently raising professional standards across the land management and food production sectors, by supporting people and businesses with our industry leading qualifications, professional memberships and auditing schemes.

SRUC

Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) was established in 2012 through the merger of the Scottish Agricultural College (SAC) with Barony, Elmwood and Oatridge Colleges. Through these institutions, we can trace our lineage back over 100 years.

NCSPulse PEP
PGRO

As the UK's centre of excellence for peas and beans, the PGRO has a long and highly valued track record of providing authoritative, up to date information and project work based on solid, reliable research.

NCSPulse PEP
AICC

AICC member agronomists are now the preferred source of advice on over 2.2 million hectares, which is almost half of the UK’s arable land, and the demand for it is stronger than ever

Advice

Advisors play a crucial role in supporting & progressing knowledge exchange in agriculture.

RAU Royal Agricultural University

Thrive through change with the Royal Agricultural University

The Farming Community Network (FCN)

A voluntary organisation & charity that supports farmers and families within the farming community.  Whether the issue is personal or business-related, FCN is here for you. We run a confidential, national helpline and e-helpline which is open every day of the year from 7am to 11pm and our volunteers provide free, confidential support to anyone who seeks help. Over 6,000 people a year benefit from FCN’s support and we can help with a variety of issues.

Cranfield University

As a specialist postgraduate university, Cranfield’s world-class expertise, large-scale facilities and unrivalled industry partnerships are creating leaders in technology and management globally

NCSPulse PEP
Agronomist & Arable Farmer

Magazine and website  

Farm491 Business Innovation Course

Business and Innovation Mentoring Course from Farm491 and RAU. We’re excited to launch our very own online course which can be accessed by any entrepreneur across the world. The course encompasses four interactive modules which will see you develop your business plan and understanding of your customers

LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming)

LEAF (Linking Environment And Farming) is the leading charity organisation delivering more sustainable food and farming. They work with farmers, the food industry, scientists and consumers, to inspire and enable sustainable farming that is prosperous, enriches the environment and engages local communities.

NCSPulse PEP
CCRI - Countryside & Community Research Institute

An internationally excellent Research Institute” (REF, 2021). Shaping rural development policy and practice in the UK, Europe and further afield.

Harper Adams University

As the population grows, so do our demands on the planet. Managing this resource has never been so important. Since it was founded in 1901, Harper has been designed to meet this challenge. Set on a 494 hectare farm, we are the leading specialist university tackling the future development of our planet's food production, processing, animal sciences, engineering, land management and sustainable business.

TIAH - The Institute for Agriculture and Horticulture

We are agriculture and horticulture’s professional body. As the home of skills and careers support, we help people and businesses fulfil their potential and the industry thrive.

Professional Development

Professional development is an important part of a career journey - an opportunity for continuous learning, a way to stay up-to-date and to demonstrate relevance and expertise. Professional development activities can be completed in a number of different ways, from attending a training course, an event or a meeting to taking part in a webinar, listening to a podcast, reading an industry magazine or being a professional member of an organisation. Those on the BASIS Professional Register, FACTS Qualifed Advisers, RoSA sheep advisers and those on the Environmental Advisers Register are all required to collect a certain number of CPD (continuous professional development) points on an annual basis to demonstrate their commitment to enhancing knowledge and skills.  For more information, please visit: https://basis-reg.co.uk/schemes.

Future Farming Resilience Fund

Third round of Defra support for Free Business Support to support farmers through the transition period is now available to farmers in England.     

Spray Application

The application of agrochemicals by modern crop sprayers involves sophisticated technologies applied by skilled operators.

Food, Farming & Countryside Commission (FFCC)

We work to bring together unusual combinations of voices in order to devise a range of practical actions that can have significant impact on our climate, nature, health and economy. 

Nuffield Farming Scholarships

The Nuffield Farming Scholarships Trust is a charity organisation whose aim is to bring positive change to agriculture through the development of its future leaders, sending them overseas to learn from others and helping them share their brilliant ideas when they return home.  

School of Sustainable Food & Farming (SSFF)

Educating, inspiring and empowering current and future farmers to achieve net zero within a sustainable farming and food system.

EU Fairshare - Digital Tools for farm advisors

The overarching aim of FAIRshare is to ensure that farm advisors and their organisations effectively use digital tools and services for supporting a more productive and sustainable agriculture.

Mental Health

The importance of good mental health is increasingly being recognised across agriculture. Use this page to connect to useful initiatives and resources.

Application of Science to Realise the Potential of the Agricultural Transition

Report by Lord Curry (Food & Farming Futures), James Lowenburg-DeBoer and Michael Lee (Harper Adams University) into how agricultural science and extension can be supported and co-ordinated to address the productivity gap in UK agriculture.    

Agricultural Colleges

Agriculture and land-based colleges play a key role in ensuring the industry is supplied with the right skills. This page acts as a hub to help connect the people and organisations in this space. 

GrowIN

Northern Ireland farmer-led innovation    

The Farmers Club Charitable Trust

Established in 1981 "to advance education and leadership in all aspects of the science and technology of agriculture"

BASIS Webinar - IPM in Agriculture

Live webinar on IPM in Agriculture on 10th November 2022

Great Farm Challenge- Bring this back for agricultural students?

Anglian Water were involved with UK agricultural colleges, CSF, EA and Natural England to run the Great Farm Challenge. This involved interactive workshops and a farm visit with each college. Each college then wrote up a report about their learnings and the students who performed the best were invited to a GFC Final Day to present thier findings. Winners recieved vouchers and a farming press subcription. GFC hasnt run for the last year- is this something the industry would like to bring back?

Riseholme College

Based in Lincolnshire, a specialist land-based college with a wide range of Further Education and Higher Education courses, from Agriculture and Equine to Sport and Food.

National Arable & Grassland Awards

The National Arable & Grassland Awards will be held on Wednesday 8th February at the Hilton London Bankside. The awards recognise the key areas of crop production, land management, environmental responsibility and innovation.

Moulton College

College offering Agriculture courses in the heart of the Northamptonshire countryside.

TMAF The Morley Agricultural Foundation

The Morley Agricultural Foundation is a charity that supports farming in the East of England by funding agricultural research, student studies, professional development of farmers and others and a variety of educational projects for school age children.

Hartpury University and College

Hartpury College

Newcastle University

Labour & Recruitment

Help us collate labour & recruitment information and resources for stakeholders across the agricultural industry. Click 'join page' to add to the summary or create resources and initiatives and link to this topic page.

Reading University

ADAS Future Farming Resilience Fund - Service

The Future Farming Resilience Fund (FFRF) is a scheme set up by Defra to provide free business support to farmers and land managers during the early years of the agricultural transition. The third phase of the fund is now open for registration.

The University of Edinburgh

Askham Bryan

One of the leading land based colleges

Writtle University College

Put Science into Practice

Suffolk Rural College

Otley college in Suffolk is now part of Suffolk New College and offers a range of Agriculture courses.

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The text to display in the title bar of a visitor's web browser when they view this page. This meta tag may also be used as the title of the page when a visitor bookmarks or favorites this page, or as the page title in a search engine result. It is common to append '[site:name]' to the end of this, so the site's name is automatically added. It is recommended that the title is no greater than 55 - 65 characters long, including spaces.
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Meta tags that might not be needed by many sites.

Geo-spatial information in 'latitude; longitude' format, e.g. '50.167958; -97.133185'; see Wikipedia for details.
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Robots
A comma-separated list of keywords about the page. This meta tag is used as an indicator in Google News.
Highlight standout journalism on the web, especially for breaking news; used as an indicator in Google News. Warning: Don't abuse it, to be used a maximum of 7 times per calendar week!
This meta tag communicates with Google. There are currently two directives supported: 'nositelinkssearchbox' to not to show the sitelinks search box, and 'notranslate' to ask Google not to offer a translation of the page. Both options may be added, just separate them with a comma. See meta tags that Google understands for further details.
Used to rate content for audience appropriateness. This tag has little known influence on search engine rankings, but can be used by browsers, browser extensions, and apps. The most common options are general, mature, restricted, 14 years, safe for kids. If you follow the RTA Documentation you should enter RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA
Indicate to search engines and other page scrapers whether or not links should be followed. See the W3C specifications for further details.
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Open Graph

The Open Graph meta tags are used to control how Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and other social networking sites interpret the site's content.

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The type of image referenced above. Should be either 'image/gif' for a GIF image, 'image/jpeg' for a JPG/JPEG image, or 'image/png' for a PNG image. Note: there should be one value for each image, and having more than there are images may cause problems.
The date this content was last modified, with an optional time value. Needs to be in ISO 8601 format. Can be the same as the 'Article modification date' tag.
Links an article to an author's Facebook profile, should be either URLs to the author's profile page or their Facebook profile IDs. Multiple values may be used, separated by a comma. Note: Tokens that return multiple values will be handled automatically.
The date this content was published on, with an optional time value. Needs to be in ISO 8601 format.
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The date this content will expire, with an optional time value. Needs to be in ISO 8601 format.
Twitter Cards

A set of meta tags specially for controlling the summaries displayed when content is shared on Twitter.

Notes:
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  • Product Card requires the 'description' field, the 'image' field, the 'Label 1' field, the 'Data 1' field, the 'Label 2' field and the 'Data 2' field.
A description that concisely summarizes the content of the page, as appropriate for presentation within a Tweet. Do not re-use the title text as the description, or use this field to describe the general services provided by the website. The string will be truncated, by Twitter, at the word to 200 characters.
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The URL to a unique image representing the content of the page. Do not use a generic image such as your website logo, author photo, or other image that spans multiple pages. Images larger than 120x120px will be resized and cropped square based on longest dimension. Images smaller than 60x60px will not be shown. If the 'type' is set to Photo then the image must be at least 280x150px. This will be able to extract the URL from an image field if the field is configured properly.
The MIME type for the media contained in the stream URL, as defined by RFC 4337.