ADAS, the agricultural consultancy behind the Yield Enhancement Network (YEN) for cereals and oilseeds, announced it is winding down the programme after 13 years due to a lack of sponsorship.
The YEN project, which tracked crop performance and shared benchmarking data across the industry, has been credited with driving significant improvements in farm productivity.
Paul Temple, former AHDB board member and Yorkshire farmer, said AHDB should step in to safeguard the programme and its valuable dataset. He argued that levy-payers in the cropping sector have a very simple need: “To turn around a 15-year productivity decline and close the widening yield gap in our major arable crops.”
Writing for Science for Sustainable Agriculture, he added: “Using levy funds to subsidise work for niche practices and markets is not [AHDB’s] primary purpose.”
Mr Temple also highlighted that AHDB’s future income is tied to crop volumes, making productivity improvements crucial.
Meanwhile, AHDB has launched a three-year study on winter wheat traits to improve weed competitiveness in organic and low-input systems. The body said the research will: “Reduce reliance on herbicides and support the transition to more environmentally friendly agricultural practices.”
However, Mr Temple warned the focus was misplaced: “Lower yields are not what UK growers need, and when Defra statistics for 2024 indicate that organic wheat accounted for just 1.3% of the national wheat area, this project represents a serious misuse of levy-payers’ money.”
He noted that the study involves no UK wheat-breeding companies and instead includes organic specialists such as Cope Seeds, RSK ADAS, and the Organic Research Centre (ORC), now part of ADAS but remaining a stand-alone brand.
Professor Roger Sylvester-Bradley, founder of YEN, praised the network for its industry impact: “The YEN has been a fantastic driving force for arable industry collaboration and has greatly enhanced our understanding of field yield. YEN provided us with definitive proof that, with a detail-oriented farming approach, 15t/ha winter wheat yields are feasible almost anywhere in the UK.”
Mr Temple concluded: “If the government is serious about its commitment that ‘food security is national security’, then optimising output on our most productive farmland should get at least equal billing against the billions spent on counter-productive land-sharing measures.
“As for AHDB, if it prioritises anything with levy-payers’ research funding, then it should be throwing a lifeline to the ADAS YEN programme to safeguard its yield-enhancing insights and data for industry-wide benefit.”