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Professors from ÁÕÀÅÊÓƵ were among experts chosen to speak at a pair of conferences marking the start of the 2025 agricultural event calendar.

At the Oxford Farming Conference, ABP Chair of Sustainable Beef and Sheep Production Professor Jude Capper led a debate in the Oxford Union, proposing the motion “This house believes that UK agriculture needs more grazing livestock, rather than fewer, to be truly sustainable.”

Meanwhile, at the counterpart Real Oxford Farming Conference, Professor of Applied Entomology Tom Pope was among experts from across the UK asked to speak on Integrated Pest Management: Challenges, opportunities and synergies.

In this guest blog, each looks back at their event.

Professor Jude Capper

I was delighted to be invited to debate at the Oxford Union.

Despite being born and raised in Oxford, I'd never set foot in the amazing Union building beforehand - it truly lived up to its venerable history. I also attended the OFC last year and I'm always struck by the excellent quality of the presentations, the opportunities to network and the real sense that change is possible - fitting well with this year's theme: "Facing Change, Finding Opportunity".

The motion that I was proposing couldn't have been more appropriate for me, a true believer in the important of grazing ruminants.  I focused on the importance of grazing livestock in nourishing soil in order to produce the food that we all enjoy - regardless of dietary preferences; on improving biodiversity through dung beetles and ground-nesting birds; and on the fact that we can have more livestock simply through improving livestock health, nutrition, breeding and management on every single farm. My supporter was Rob Havard, a beef farmer and ecologist who took us on a wonderful vocal tour of his meadows grazed by Angus cows. 

The opponents were Henry Dimbleby, who made eloquent reference to his excellent work on the National Food Strategy report; and Colin Ferguson, a Scottish dairy farmer and Vice Chair of the NFU’s Milk Committee who utterly hilarious - his comparisons of the dairy herd to the modern family were absolutely on-point and had everybody in fits of laughter.

I hadn't met either opponent before, and we obviously had to take very different positions on the issue for the debate, but as so often happens with these events, it was great to see how often we were in vehement agreement in our pre-and post-debate conversation.

We won the debate, which was wonderful, albeit by a small margin - I suspect that Colin's brilliant humour won over some of those audience members who were less passionate about grazing! It was a wonderful experience, finished off by dinner at the Christchurch College Great Hall, inspiration for the Hogwarts Hall in the Harry Potter films, at which grazing livestock featured again - grass-fed British beef!

Professor Tom Pope

Every year the Oxford Real Farming Conference connects people in the UK and around the globe who want to transform our food and farming system.

At a time of great change in the sector, meetings like this are essential if we are to not only meet the challenges faced but also to see the opportunities to improve the way in which crops can be grown to make food production as sustainable as possible. 

 The title of the session I took part in was 'IPM: Challenges, opportunities and synergies'. It consisted of three parts - each part covered by a different speaker.

In the first part, Prof Rosemary Collier from University of Warwick considered 'What are the main challenges in implementing effective IPM and how can growers overcome these challenges?'

In the second part, I examined 'Do we see synergism in IPM and are we using the science of IPM?'

In the third part, Andy Dibben, who farms Abbey Home Farm in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, looked at 'How is IPM applied commercially, and does it actually work?'

I was delighted to be invited to speak in this session by and there were some good discussions in the session, both with the other speakers and the audience.

It was my first conference after being appointed Professor of Applied Entomology.

I look forward to doing everything I can to continue to develop the Entomology Group at ÁÕÀÅÊÓƵ Adams and support the fantastic team of academics and researchers who make up this group.

There is no shortage of areas in which we can make a difference, from improving crop protection, helping to reverse declines in insect populations and most importantly, to ensure that there are future generations of entomologists equipped with the skills required to meet these challenges.