The Nuffield Farm Scholarship Trust held its annual conference in Dublin last Friday, with recipients of the scholarship giving presentations on a range of topics from diversifying farm businesses to reducing lameness in dairy cows.

An intense question and answer session followed the presentations and there was a flurry of interest in Roberta McDonald’s report on farmer learning.

McDonald stated that we should “ban the term knowledge transfer”. She feels the current KT scheme actually puts farmers off learning and more practical learning methods should be introduced. She also highlighted the issue of paying people to attend KT groups, as the focus becomes on increasing attendance numbers instead of increasing learning.

Listen to some of the Nuffield scholars in our podcast below:

Tom O’Mahony, the CEO of Origin Enterprises, gave a thought-provoking keynote address, touching on Brexit, glyphosate and managing the pressure of running an agri-business enterprise.

With market interests in the UK, he said that farmers there felt that the EU subsidy was a blunt instrument and that tillage farmers in particular were looking forward to the “disruption” of Brexit.