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RAFT delivers close-to-market research in sustainable food, advanced breeding services, food futures consultancy and training via its award-winning brands ‘Farmskills’ and ‘Vetskills’. Deep farming and food links with its farmer and veterinary base both in the UK and globally from Canada to New Zealand, supported by XLVets, has helped RAFT forge world-leading partnerships in sustainable food.
RAFT Solutions and Harper Adams University, specialising in agriculture and environmental subjects, are setting up the world’s first School of Sustainable Food and Farming (SSFF). Professor Jonathan Statham, RAFT Chief Executive, has taken up a new Chair position in Sustainable Livestock Health and Welfare at the newly opened Harper and Keele Veterinary School and will work with Professor Michael Lee and the team at Harper Adams to deliver the school’s sustainability agenda.
Morrisons are British farming’s biggest supermarket customer and all Morrisons-branded fresh meat and everything on its butchers’ counters is 100% British. Over the next nine years, Morrisons will work with its 3,000 farmers and growers to produce affordable net zero carbon meat, poultry, fruit and vegetables. UK agriculture currently accounts for 10 per cent of all UK greenhouse gas
emissions, with new research revealing that two thirds of people consider the environmental impact of the food they eat. Morrisons will work with RAFT, Harper Adams and SSFF to deliver this
ambitious goal.
Jonathan Statham said, "RAFT is incredibly proud to support Morrisons in this ambition, which is true to the very core of RAFT’s activity making a real difference at farm level with practical and
achievable solutions to the sustainability challenge.
"The pressures on farming and farmers are intense but there are win-win opportunities where
better animal health and welfare are better economically as well as better for the planet. Reducing
the waste of poor health and reproductive inefficiency alongside delivering practical precision
livestock farming (PLF) solutions is where RAFT supports sustainable farming with Morrisons."
Reducing carbon in primary food production forms a key part of this programme. RAFT Solutions will work with Morrisons to deliver its aims to achieve its net zero farming goals, working with farmers in its beef supply chain on a holistic strategy, managing animal and worker welfare as well as farming
for environmental sustainability