Newcastle University Farm Tour

Spend a day with fellow farmers exploring practical innovation in action. Lunch, refreshments and transport available.

Join the Farmer Scientist Network at NU Farms for an engaging and informative visit that explores cutting-edge agricultural practices relating to productivity, sustainability and environmental stewardship.

This on-farm event offers a unique opportunity to see these systems in action and discuss how they can help future-proof farming in the face of climate, economic, and regulatory pressures.

A farm walk in the morning at Nafferton Farm will cover recent investments in data management, feeding systems, cow welfare and calf housing, plus the deployment of sensing technology being used to monitor emissions from their dairy herd at milking. We’ll also explore their work with enhanced rock weathering at the Nafferton Factorial Systems Plots, having just applied their second round of rockdust to the ‘carbon-building’ treatment here at 20 t/ha. We’ll also visit an AHDB ‘Innovation Site’ trial looking at the effects of tillage and companion crop density on CSFB, with a chance to talk about wider IPM implementation across the farm – as well as related research which includes biological crop and livestock inputs, and pest/disease monitoring using molecular methods, imaging and bioacoustics.

After lunch, a tractor-trailer tour of Cockle Park Farm will include several key commercial and research projects. Among these we will visit our Agroforestry Field after its first willow/poplar harvest in 2026, exploring the integration of trees into crop and livestock systems for multiple benefits. We will also see their ‘Biomass Connect’ project plots, where work is exploring the optimal varieties and species of plants to meet our growing needs for biomass production, and their tillage trials, where different approaches to soil management are being investigated, and monitored using real-time soil sensors linked to LoRaWAN to build extensive datasets on soil conditions, nutrients and organic matter. We’ll also cover how these soil sensors have recently been added to their Palace Leas platform – a 130 year-old permanent hay meadow experiment exploring varying nutrient inputs, with a number of new sensors also installed in our Hydrologically Isolated Plots.