Best of British

Best of British Wheat is a new initiative led by Agrii to help growers to drive towards 2% yield increases per year over the next two decades to meet increasing national, European and international demand for both food and fuel.

Agrii’s Best Of British Wheat Initiative

There is a Spanish proverb that translates to ‘Civilisation and anarchy are only seven meals apart’. Julian Cribb uses this as the premise for his book ‘The Coming Famine – The global food crisis and what we can do to avoid it ‘(UC Press 2010). A bit dramatic? Well, maybe, but with one hundred million more mouths to feed every year on our planet, primary food producers have definitely got their work cut out for them.

Now we are not claiming that Agrii’s ‘Best of British’ initiative is going to save the world however we do feel there is an urgency for agriculture to invest in solutions that lead to significant improvements in productivity. This is why Agrii invests in research, development and communication of new innovations in our industry and we are championing the cause under the ‘Best Of British’ banner.

What is Best of British Wheat?

An Agrii initiative to help growers drive towards 2% yield increases per year over the coming two decades to meet increasing national, European and international demand for both food and fuel.

Best of British Wheat will run alongside our highly successful Best of British Oilseeds initiative (the first dedicated national OSR improvement project), which has pioneered sustained improvements in commercial OSR performance over the past seven years.

A structured framework for coordinating detailed research at our trials sites with practical grower demonstrations and events throughout our Agrii Events Network.

Uniquely amongst knowledge-transfer programmes, it gives our growers exclusive access to the best research-led growing advice on a host of agronomic improvements tailored to their individual circumstances directly through their own agronomists.

Through the new initiative we are setting out to help growers raise their wheat yields – as the key driver of crop profitability – by 2% annually through carefully tailored advice based on the most appropriate agronomy identified by research and demonstrated in practice.

Our initial focus is on key areas of wheat management our team has identified as presenting particular opportunities for immediate crop improvement. It links the unique wheat improvement R&D at our Throws Farm, Stow Longa and AgriFocus trials sites and includes integrated grass weed management, better performance in challenging situations (including second wheat) and maximising crop quality and consistency.

Recognising the very different conditions and challenges facing individual growers, Best of British Wheat certainly won’t be producing blueprints which look good on paper but are seldom of much value in commercial practice. Instead, we will be generating a growing range of well-validated improvement options, which can be combined in different ways under different circumstances to allow every farm to achieve the sustained production gains.

We invite you to get involved with Agrii’s Best Of British initiative.