Case study: HeartLand
Photo acknowledgement: Devenish (2019) https://www.devenishnutrition.com/press-releases/214/devenish-launches-major-european-scientific-research-project-on-health-from-soil-to-society
- Tertiary/Higher Education
- Indoor & Outdoor
- Farm, Workshop / training
- United Kingdom
HeartLand
’HeartLand’ was a research and training programme in which five postgraduate students collaboratively explored and integrated the relationships between soil, sward, animal, farm management, environment and human health on a working farm site in Northern Ireland. Their respective projects investigated areas of soil biology, grassland sciences and sward composition, animal nutrition and modelling, and environmental sciences.
Running from 2018-2023, HeartLand was an international project (coordinated by Wageningen University and sponsored by Marie Curie) that brought together industry, academic, policymaker and farming stakeholders around the aim to create environmentally and economically sustainable land management practices.
Objective
The educational objective of the project was to train PhD students through an innovative, integrated and collaborative research training programme in the multidisciplinary topic of ‘soil-to-society’. Through its multidisciplinary research objective, it aimed to tackle a contemporary challenge in developing livestock production systems that simultaneously enhance environmental sustainability and support a healthy diet. This included a focus on optimising the ‘Big Five’ soil functions: production of food, feed and fibre; provision of habitats for both functional and intrinsic biodiversity; carbon sequestration; regulation and provision of clean water; the provision and cycling of nutrients.
Approach
This EU-funded project trained PhD students in multidisciplinary approaches to exploring issues of environmental and economic sustainability within the food production system, incorporating a major focus on soils and developing land management practices that maximise positive impacts on the environment whilst improving the nutritional and sensory quality of meat.
Collaboration was central to this approach. This included the overarching research programme, which was informed by international and intersectoral stakeholder partners. However, it was also characteristic of the doctoral training programme, through which the PhD students were provided with the opportunity to gain industry experience while working on soil related issues in collaborative and engaged research.