Recruitment will soon begin to find nine new monitor farms across Scotland.
The new monitor farms project, which is funded using £1.25million from the government’s knowledge transfer and innovation fund, will be run jointly by Quality Meat Scotland (QMS) and AHDB Cereals and Oilseeds. The project will run for four years.
QMS head of industry development Douglas Bell said the two levy organisations planned to have the host farms confirmed by this year’s Royal Highland Show however the first meetings are not likely to take place until October and November.
He said group facilitators would be appointed in the first instance and then the hunt to find host farmers would be done locally in the nine different regional areas selected for the programme.
“This is about the whole business and there will hopefully be a mixture of arable and livestock on the majority of these farms,” said Mr Bell.
Speaking at the QMS annual spring press briefing in Edinburgh, Mr Bell also gave an insight into some of the red meat levy body’s research and knowledge transfer plans for the year ahead.
To aid sheep farmers, a work stream will be set up to look at different wintering strategies for sheep and work will also be carried out to try and improve the feedback given to producers after lambs are sent for slaughter.
QMS is also exploring the possibility of creating a cow profitability index.
Mr Bell said: “We are trying to add value to EBVs (estimated breeding values) by copying some of the work that’s been done in other parts of the world. There an obvious synergy with what’s going on with the beef efficiency scheme and we are going to look at the possibility of developing an EBV for profitability for cows on the maternal side.”
