Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security (Taught)

Our course provides specialist skills and knowledge about the most important issues related to the sustainability of agricultural production and food security. This master's in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security is suitable if you have an interest in sustainable agriculture and food security and want to develop a broad knowledge of the subject.

Sustainable agriculture and food security focuses on the availability of food now and in the future. This is a major concern of scientific and commercial communities world-wide.

The prominence of this subject is driven by:
an increasing global population
pressure on non-renewable or scarce resources
a need to increase food production whilst minimising the impact on the environment

The Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security master's covers all aspects of food security as outlined by Global Food Security. The Global Food Security is a multi-agency programme involving the main UK public sector funders of research and training related to food.

Industry experienced and research-active lecturers teach on this course.

Our staff:
Dr Hannah Davis is the Degree Programme Director and an experienced researcher in the area of ruminant nutrition and grazing management. Hannah's research aims to understand how dairy management practices affect milk quality, animal health and environmental impact with a view to optimising sustainable farming systems.

You can also view staff profiles related to research in Agricultural Production.

Our lecturers are industry experienced and research active. Our research in integrated agricultural production focuses on:
soil science
plant science
ecology
dairy and beef production

Our research spans a range of scales, from pot – plot – farm – landscape.

Strategic research embraces work on:
soil quality
rhizosphere function
plant-soil feedback
soil-carbon dynamics
nutrient cycling
sustainable livestock

Applied research addresses issues of:
climate change mitigation (including biofuels)
ecological (organic) farming systems
low-input crop systems
agriculture-environment interactions

Delivery:
This course is taught in four-week teaching blocks.

You'll be taught through:
lectures
seminars
practical and field classes
tutorials
case studies
small group discussions

We expect you to undertake independent study outside of these structured sessions.

We offer flexible learning for those already working in industry through the Credit Accumulation Transfer Scheme. This framework enables us to award postgraduate-level qualifications using credit-bearing stand-alone modules as 'building blocks' towards a qualification. This means that the credits from modules undertaken within a five-year period can be 'banked' towards the award of a qualification.

Facilities:
NU Farms
Our multi-purpose farms are viable farming businesses. We use them as demonstration facilities for teaching purposes. They also provide land-based research facilities.

Our facilities provide an open innovation platform enabling researchers to work with farmers, industry, and environmental and government stakeholders. Together, they develop innovative solutions for balancing sustainable global food production with a thriving rural economy and protection of the wider environment.

These research facilities help us to understand:
the development and functioning of plant and animal hosts, pathogens and their interactions
the complex biogeochemical functions of the soil
crop and livestock health, welfare and productivity
environmental impact
interactions between the managed farm environment and the land-air-water interface

We use this fundamental knowledge to:
integrate genomics, physiology and agronomy in molecular breeding approaches
develop and optimise farming systems

We collect real data from a network of on-farm crop, soil, livestock and environmental sensors. We use this data to calibrate and validate the digital technologies and models that help us in our research and developments.