Farm491 is a technology and innovation space focused on the future of farming and food systems based at the the Royal Agricultural University, which supports AgriTech, AgriFood and farming entrepreneurs in the UK and internationally in converting their ideas or technological solutions into viable and successful businesses.

We are delighted to be a partner in the National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise (NICRE). Together with the CCRI, we form the Southwest team, working with the Enterprise Research Centre at Warwick University and the Centre for Rural Economy (CRE) at Newcastle University. Research England is funding this exciting research collaboration for three years, which started in September 2020.

NICRE research activities and outputs at the RAU are led by NICRE Deputy Director Professor Tom MacMillan.

These documents list peer reviewed research papers, books, conference presentations, research and consultancy reports and details of our PhD students, including those graduating each year.

Our research publications are deposited in CREST – a joint repository for research outputs from members of the Consortium for Research Excellence, Support and Training (CREST). CREST is a sub-association of GuildHE, a representative body for Higher Education in the UK.

Based at the newly established RAU Swindon, this research cluster is examining the historic environment.

This includes a number of archaeological projects in Britain and overseas as well as studies of historically important industrial buildings and landscapes. The group has a strong interest in connections between soils and historic land-use, using shallow geophysics, pXRF and UAV imaging as data sources. Heritage-based regeneration is another area of focus. The cluster has specific expertise in cave and subterranean archaeology both in the UK and Africa.

Researchers at the RAU understand that land and landscape are a dynamic entity, the product of millennia of human curation, in the countryside and small rural towns.

The rural economy includes industries traditionally associated with rural areas, such as agriculture, forestry and sectors such as creative industries, technology orientation across businesses and the service industry.

The cluster’s research focuses on the relationship between equine behavioural neuroscience, gastric health and dietary manipulation of stabled performance horses, and makes a significant contribution to horse welfare.

The holistic approach involves behavioural and physical health profiling to reveal the triggers of gut dysbiosis and aberrant behaviours. The team has developed several innovative testing methods that are effective, non-invasive and low cost, but with high animal welfare impact.

This research cluster considers food supply as a subset of wider food systems.

The collective research activity is considering food supply as a socio-economic and a socio-technical system which inform food safety, food supply and the moral framing and behaviours in supply chains.

Cluster members

Professor Tom MacMillan

Professor David Main

Dr Beverley Hill

The focus of our research into livestock is to provide scientific support for welfare and animal health improvement and to provide robust welfare outcome methodologies that can be used in a commercial context.

Recently the work has been extended to consider the economic and policy value of positive welfare/good life opportunities in livestock species and calf welfare assessment measures. We also have expertise in epidemiology which enables us to extend quantitative approaches to animal health and welfare.

This research cluster is developing improved methods of cultivation, with nutrient recovery, low carbon agriculture, soil conservation and planting regimes, to enable long-term sustainability, achieving net zero-carbon, and healthier food.

Underpinning this has been a long-term systematic experiment (LTE) at Harnhill Farm - ongoing for 11 years - in which three regimes (plough, minimum till, and direct drill) and three crops have been monitored across 18 plots.