And finally… Yorkshire’s chips are in
The University of Leeds and McCain Foods have dug in for an 18-year partnership to run a 500-acre commercial research farm near Tadcaster, right on the West and North Yorkshire border.
The site will become McCain’s third ‘Farm of the Future’, following projects in Canada and South Africa.
The UK farm will put practical ideas to the test, such as how to lighten the environmental footprint of potato production while helping crops stay cool, calm, and cultivated in the face of unpredictable weather, tired soils, and shifting policy ground.
The programme will trial controlled traffic farming, continuous soil cover, and biodiversity measures across the arable rotation.
The farm will also be the first in McCain’s network to experiment with a circular nutrient system, using pig manure supplied through a partnership with the nearby National Pig Centre – because turning waste into value is not something to muck about with.
Further trials will explore autonomous machinery, alternative fuels, and digital agriculture systems.
