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SEAMS - Sustainability in Education and Agriculture using Mixtures

 

   

SEAMS (Sustainability in Education and Agriculture using Mixtures) is a four-year project funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, and coordinated by the James Hutton Institute, which ran from April 2019 to March 2023. The project’s aims were to develop, promote and implement crop species mixtures as a sustainable crop production system for Scotland and as a resource for knowledge exchange on food production, agricultural ecology, and environmental sustainability to a wider audience including school groups.

SEAMS has now come to an end but our results have been summarised in a final report.

Our project partner LEAF has also produced a podcast which discusses the outcomes of SEAMS and where we wish to take the work in the future.

One of our key outputs is a data platform which provides a range of information about on-farm crop mixture trials, including how the trials were sown, what the mixture was, and how well the mixture performed. Follow this link to find out more: data platform.

 

 

What are crop mixtures and why should we be interested in them?

Crop species mixtures – also known as intercrops – involve the growing together of more than one crop species at the same time and in the same area of land. Although a common practice globally, and once common in countries such as Scotland, they have fallen out of favour during the recent drive to highly mechanised and intensive farming. Potential benefits from mixed crops include the maintenance of crop yields with reduced inputs such as herbicides and pesticides, and greater resilience to environmental variability such as summer droughts.

Challenges to the wider growing of crop mixtures include the provision of advice to farmers on what to grow and how to grow it as part of a modern farming system and generating an understanding of crop mixtures and a demand for their products.

 

What we have done through SEAMS

SEAMS developed a network of field sites across the main arable food production areas of Scotland. These sites trialled crop mixtures, providing information on how to tailor the use of crop mixtures to different locations in Scotland. They also provided a platform for knowledge exchange and learning. The sites were working farms spread across Scotland and the project took a participatory approach, especially with respect to deciding the crop mixtures to be trialled.

Core sites also hosted visits for wide a range of groups, including:

• Farmers - following the highly successful GWCT farmer clusters approach core sites were a hub for discussions with farmers.

• Local schools – schools engaged in citizen science activities and used crop mixtures as an opportunity to find out more about sustainable food production and the ecology of farmed landscapes.

• Food buyers and producers – to help increase the uptake and demand for local products derived from crop mixtures.

• Policy makers – to promote crop mixtures within future policy decision making.

A leaflet providing an overview of the SEAMS project can be downloaded here.

 

Recent SEAMS activities

Although the SEAMS project has come to an end, we are continuing our work on crop mixtures including running field trials and promoting the outcomes from SEAMS. In particular, we have discussed or will be discussing SEAMS and our wider work on crop mixtures at the following events:

 

 

Crop mixtures – harnessing biodiversity for sustainable farming education platform

Produced by Royal highland Education Trust Working in partnership with Buglife and the James Hutton institute, the resource offers the chance to find out more about growing crop mixtures and biodiversity. There is also a student resource linked to data analysis and suitable for supporting Higher Applications of Mathematics and DYW linked video content.

https://www.rhet.org.uk/teachers/crop-mixtures-food-sustainability/

 

Other SEAMS outputs

Reports are available from two workshops coordinated for the SEAMS project by LEAF

JHL Cereals 2021 podcast: https://huttonltd.podbean.com/e/intercropping-with-professor-rob-brooker-and-doctor-alison-karley/

SEAMS video, produced for 2020's online Arable Scotland event.

Virtual Field Day held in collaboration with the Agricology network and the Designing Innovative Plant Teams for Ecosystem Resilience and Agricultural Sustainability (DIVERSify) project bringing together insights from farmer experience and scientific research.

An episode of LEAFcast, the podcast produced by our project partner Linking Environment and Farming UK (LEAF). In it, LEAF Technical Assistant Emily Trivett chats researchers from the SEAMS and DIVERSify projects about the benefits of intercropping.

Project partners:

The project involves and is supported by a number of partner organisations:

Related sites

The following websites provide more information on crop mixtures and sustainable farming projects:

  • DIVERSify: Designing InnoVative plant teams for Ecosystem Resilience and agricultural Sustainability
  • TRUE: TRansition paths to sUstainable legume based systems in Europe

Contact

For more information on the project please contact SEAMS@hutton.ac.uk

The SEAMS data privacy statement can be found here.

Project Information
Project Type: 
Active Project

Research

Areas of Interest


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The James Hutton Research Institute is the result of the merger in April 2011 of MLURI and SCRI. This merger formed a new powerhouse for research into food, land use, and climate change.