The Duchy Discussion Group recently welcomed Becky Willson to talk about Soils, Carbon and Climate. Increased focus on reducing emissions within agriculture has created a lot of negativity towards the sector, at a time where the industry is already volatile and has become susceptible to a lot of bad publicity.

Becky is Research Leader for The Soil Carbon Project at the Rural Business School, In 2017 Becky completed a Nuffield Scholarship and travelled around the world looking at agricultural emissions, soils and meeting global scientists within the industry. Becky has an unambiguous passion for areas related to soils, emissions and science and her knowledge around these topics is influential.

The group were provided with a very interesting talk that enabled everyone to have a clear understanding of the scientific and environmental factors that have been associated with agricultural emissions, and how we should be looking after our precious soils to enable better returns. Becky enabled the group to understand the various ways on how the industry can sustainably reduce theimpacts of farming on the environment, international and national targets to lower emissions and showed the group examples of work that Becky is involved in.

The group would like to thank Becky for taking the time to provide us with such an interesting and educational evening.

Duchy Discussion Group was set up in 2016 by an enthusiastic group of graduating students, who wished to join, or develop their own, progressive farming–related businesses. Their aim was to establish a dynamic forum to build on the motivation they developed during their time at Duchy College. Their activities have included visits to the Houses of Parliament, meetings with MPs George Eustice, the farming minister and Neil Parish, chair of the Efra Select Committee and various visits to leading farms. More recently the group has become the Young Innovators’ Forum, being joined by early–stage researchers from the partner organisations in the Agritech Cornwall project. New members are very welcome.
Please contact Rachel Abrahall at – rachel.abrahall@duchy.ac.uk or 07970985914.