University’s farm goes fully regenerative in a bid to tackle the effects of climate change
The Royal Agricultural University (RAU) has joined forces with an award-winning local regenerative farming business to make the University’s teaching farm fully regenerative. Coates Manor Farm sits next door to the University’s main Cirencester campus. The 457-acre arable farm is now being farmed in a new collaboration between the university and local farmer SS Horton and Sons, run by RAU alumnus Ed Horton. This change in farming system – which includes a more diverse crop rotation, a range of cover crops, grazing cover crops with livestock, and direct drilling – has enabled RAU students to gain experience in a wider range of farm management techniques including growing peas, beans, and spelt wheat, as well the management of over winter cover crops. RAU Agriculture Professor Nicola Cannon, who oversees the teaching at Manor Farm, said: “In addition to using the farm as a base for practical field classes and environmental planning, it also allows us to teach students the more traditional agricultural skills, such as crop and livestock monitoring and evaluation, understanding a range of husbandry …