Delivering on Cereals & Oilseeds levy investment

Last year, levy payers shared their views as part of our Shape the Future process to influence what priority areas the levy should be invested in. The clear message was that trusted variety and product testing, independent research and analysis, work across the supply chain, and knowledge exchange were the most important.

Since then, the Cereals & Oilseeds Sector Council has ensured that those areas have been the focus of our delivery for the sector.

A total of 79% of growers use our Recommended Lists and scored it 4.2/5 for importance during the Shape the Future vote last year.

Levy payers benefit from independent recommendations based on 30,000 trial plots covering 11 crops.

It's an important source of variety information and the sector council has proposed a levy increase, which will contribute to improving the service.

James, Perdiswell Farm:

"The work done by the AHDB is behind so many key decisions on the farm, whether that's understanding the effectiveness of chemicals, choosing the right cereal or oilseed variety or applying the optimum amount of nutrition, solid, independent information is behind them all."

RB209 has been a critical nutrient management resource for over 50 years.

It is the essential starting point for levy payers and agronomists to have informed conversations about what works for their crops.

We have pledged to support and improve it with a proposed levy increase.

Listen to our Food & Farming podcast to discover how it has stood the test of time – and how it can stay relevant to crop production.

Our Strategic Cereal Farms put cutting-edge research and innovation into practice on commercial farms around the UK.

This month, along with farm hosts, industry experts and researchers, we're hosting a series of webinars to highlight the latest results from across the network.

A levy increase will help us to continue to share the latest research and innovations.

Our fungicide performance work provides high-quality, independent information on the efficacy of fungicides against key diseases in wheat, barley and oilseed rape.

Independent evaluation has shown a typical net yield gain worth £17.67 per ha associated with a change to a superior fungicide product.

“You can spend thousands on fungicides. All of our decisions are based on AHDB data; the savings through having and using the data are enormous. The benefits are incalculable when measured against the proportion of the levy that supports the fungicide performance project – which is peanuts.” – Grower

More investment will fund this vital work.

We have over 2m web hits per year on the Cereals & Oilseeds market insight pages and over 14,000 subscribers to our two main reports – a weekly market report and Grain Market Daily.

Our analysts are constantly producing insight and analysis to help inform your business.

Last year, teachers downloaded 1.3m Food – a fact of life (FFL) resources to help them tell the farm-to-fork story in the classroom.

We work with the British Nutrition Foundation, LEAF and others across all sectors to educate schoolchildren on food and nutrition and the importance of agriculture.

Over 6,000 people have attended our Monitor Farm meetings over the last year, and of those, 82% identified business improvements and 88% agreed it improved technical knowledge.

It's a fantastic opportunity for levy payers to see opportunities that are farmer-led and have local relevance.

Harry Baker-Cresswell, farmer:

“I believe the levy offers great value to those in farming. The Chathill Monitor Farm meetings I have attended have been thought-provoking and useful. I am confident I will continue to learn more of the current complexities in farming through the AHDB.”

Richard Ling, ex-monitor farmer:

''It's massively improved our business. It's taken us from a very average farm to probably a top 25%er."

More investment is needed to continue our vital work and provide farmer-driven learning and idea-sharing.