LiveWheat at Green Acres Farm in Shropshire

Agricultural research is vital to continuing positive development within the UK agricultural community and across UK food systems.

The research can take many forms. The participatory approach is one which farmers and researchers are finding increasingly successful. It is both collaborative and rewarding as research priorities are shared and the results can be dramatic and transformative for all participants. LiveWheat is one such participatory research project run by and for researchers and farmers in the UK.

On 10 June 2020 OF&G development manager, Steven Jacobs, went to Mark Lea's Green Acres Farm in Shropshire to record a crop assessment run by the Organic Research Centre as part of the LiveWheat research programme.

Mark is a director of the farmer collective, Organic Arable and has held an OF&G organic license for more than 20 years.

This video is snapshot of a crop assessment undertaken as part of the LiveWheat project.

This video was made by Steven Jacobs for Organic Farmers and Growers C.I.C. The location is Mark Lea's Green Acres Farm in Shropshire which is an organic farm licensed by OF&G.

Mark Lea and Dr Ambrogio Costanzo took part in the AHDB-OF&G webinar – Collective plant breeding for reduced input farming along with Dr Phil Howell of NIAB and Emily Pope from the AHDB.

That webinar was recorded and the video will be posted on the OF&G very soon.

More webinars and other online events looking at organic food and farming are taking place this summer. For details go to OF&G National Organic Combinable Crops 2020  #NOCC20

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In cooperation with the AHDB the Organic Research Centre manage the farm-based organic wheat variety trials network (LiveWheat).

More details on LiveWheat

Project aims -

• Building on the outcomes of the H2020 funded Liveseed project, the objectives of this project will be to:

• Establish a network of farmers and researchers, with broad stakeholders’ support, able to undertake on-farm experimentation and data collection to enable informed decision making for sustainable organic and low-input wheat production.

• Collect key data and information about crop growth and development on-farm, including its interaction with the weed community, and on crop production and product quality which is relevant to farmers and stakeholders along the supply chain, e.g. millers and bakers and animal feed market.

• Provide a detailed and robust statistical analysis of the data collected, integrating experimental data with external data sources, including research data and agro-environmental variables, to enable data-based decisional models developed to assist with farm business decisions.

• Ensure visibility of the projects, its methodology and its results, towards organic and non-organic farmers, stakeholders, scientific community, policy makers and the wider public.

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Mark Lea and Ambrogio Costanzo also feature in the seed discussion we broadcast as part of the V-NOCC series, this webinar is now available to watch online -

Seeds and Deeds - Collective plant breeding for reduced input farming