Farmer-led research into low input farming methods is yielding results, according to the Soil Association, which has engaged with the Duchy Originals Future Farming Programme since its launch in 2012. Over this period, the programme has worked with around 2,000 organic and non-organic farmers to find solutions to common agricultural problems through innovative research into organic and low input methods.

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Since 2012, the programme has funded four research projects and run field labs on more than a dozen topics, including:

• · Different methods of cultivation to control weeds in cereal crops
• · Managing fertility in arable and field-scale vegetables
• · Reducing the need for antibiotics in dairy herds
• · Controlling fluke, creating a tool to help farmers assess the risk in individual fields
• · Improving welfare and lowering energy use in poultry production by rearing birds in dark brooders
• · Peat-free compost materials for seed propagation
• · Using jets of hot foam to kill weeds
• · Testing new varieties of open-pollinated seeds.

Field labs bring a small group of likeminded farmers together to solve a problem, adapting an approach pioneered in developing countries that supports practical DIY research by farmers.

Soil Association chief executive Helen Browning has been actively involved with one field lab, which aims to reduce the use of antibiotics in dairy herds. Commenting on the experience in early January, she said, "If we had invested a fraction of available research funding into organic and low-input methods, we would have made so much more progress. The Duchy Originals Future Farming Programme shows what can happen if you encourage farmers to take the lead on research: it enables them to take up the findings straight away and put them to immediate practical use."

Browning continued, "Farmers themselves know what issues are affecting them every day. Helping farmers experiment and share their findings and experience is a cost-effective way of piloting new approaches to help them solve these issues or find ways around them."

In October, a group of experts on food policy and sustainable farming gathered in Parliament to discuss R&D funding with MPs in the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Agroecology. The Experts, from the Centre for Agroecology and Food Security at Coventry University, said that current allocation of research funding is inequitable and not generally devised with the interests of farmers in mind. They added that, even in the case of public sector allocations, funding allocations tend not to reflect the desires of the public at large.

They called for "fundamental changes in the way we produce knowledge, in the way research institutions are organised," to ensure policy makers are mindful of the people on the receiving end of their policies and research.  

The winners of the next round of research grants from the Duchy Originals scheme, worth £50,000, will be announced later in January 2014.