Welcome to the Blog: Farms for the Future: The Importance of Farmer Collaboration
- katedewally
- Apr 4
- 2 min read
It has been a while since I have written a blog post! For those who don’t know me, I am a PhD researcher looking at the role of farmer collaboration in the context of Environmental Land Management in English agriculture. I have six months left of my project and would like to share what I have done and my perspectives more widely.
Previously I used my blog as a platform to interview academics about their work within agriculture, and how they have included practical examples of farming in their research (feel free to take a look at the old posts). However, I now feel like it is time to start writing again to share my perspectives and experiences in an informal way. I have now also created an Instagram account @kate_dewally in which I aim to share these blog posts, but a few extra bits about farming, environmental management and collaboration when it takes my fancy.
Since last posting in 2024, agriculture has become an increasingly exciting (and volatile) sector and this has allowed me to have some great experiences whilst researching farm cluster groups including presenting for farm clusters, at conferences as well as attending key events in the farming calendar including Groundswell (https://www.groundswellag.com/ ), both Oxford Farming Conferences (https://www.ofc.org.uk/, https://orfc.org.uk/ ), and Cereals (https://www.thecerealsevent.co.uk/ ).
I have also published my first research paper which highlighted the roles that scheme design, integrity, political uncertainty and collaboration have on the uptake of the Environmental Land Management Schemes, and private nature markets (https://katedewally.wixsite.com/kate-dewally/research ). Positively, my research highlights how the transition from basic payments to being paid for environmental benefits has improved collaboration in the sector. In particular, this has been happening through farm cluster groups, which have been having huge social benefits within the sector, as well as some groups giving their members access to private nature markets or landscape recovery projects.
Due to the clear social, environmental and business resilience benefits of farmer collaboration, the rest of my PhD has focused on farm cluster groups which alongside the research side of the work (to be shared ASAP), working in this topic has allowed me to go to Farm Cluster meetings, and meet people doing amazing work bringing farmers together towards improving environmental challenges, business resilience and social cohesion .
As well as using the blog as a platform to share my work, I look forward to sharing blog posts about my journey into agriculture, PhD life and perspectives and updates about what is happening in this exciting area of agriculture! In the future I would also like to showcase examples of Environmental Land Management and farmer collaboration and would like to invite anyone who is interested in talking to me about this to get in touch with me.
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