Field advisors play a key role in enabling decision making and enhancing the skills and development of tens of thousands of farming and land management businesses. As competitive and knowledge intensive sectors there is increasing premium on high quality, up to date knowledge.
Improving the skills and knowledge of land managers has become a key imperative for government and industry with field advisers vital to this. The Foresight Report on The Future of Food and Farming identifies the top priority for action as improvement in advisory services for tackling the challenge of food security. Land managers also face increasing pressures to deliver a whole range of goods and services from the land, as highlighted in the Foresight review on the Future of Land Use. Field advisers have therefore become the frontline orchestrators of land management and the agri-food system, critical to marrying commercial objectives with broader demands for the delivery of ecosystem services and sustainable resource use. This has been recognised by the professions themselves in recent years, with increasing self-reflection on skills and knowledge needs.
At the same time research funders are investing in new research initiatives, including programmes under the Living with Environmental Change and Global Food Security programmes. It is critical that these initiatives link effectively to the rural professions.
The Landbridge network therefore aims to enhance the knowledge development and inter-professional learning of field advisors and encourage new approaches and strategies for knowledge exchange between researchers and land-based professions. It has three key objectives:
.
