The UK’s leading agricultural research facility is facing a funding crisis with its future work in jeopardy. Rothamsted Research is pausing all ‘non-essential’ work, announcing a hiring pause and warning of pay freezes.
The facility is dependent on funding with the majority of it as a core grant directly from the government’s UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) department, in five-year cycles. However in the last two years, the funding has had no inflation costs. For several years the institute has been running at a loss, with the government occasionally topping up funds.
Its research involves work looking into how farmers can be productive while growing trees in their fields, finding out how much carbon crops can store, and two national networks for monitoring insect populations in the UK.
The situation is now at crisis point, with future operations by the facility uncertain and scientists fearing for their jobs.
A large part of the government’s offer to farmers post-Brexit, as they struggle with a lack of workers and new environmental rules for government payments, is promised new research.
This would make farmers be able to work more efficiently, using fewer inputs such as fertiliser, and also need fewer staff as innovations such as robotic vegetable pickers are developed.
