YOUNG farmers from Dumfries and Galloway are being invited to pitch innovative ideas to help the dairy industry in a new Dragon’s Den-style competition.
The Digital Dairy Chain, which is funded by Strength in Places and led by Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), has teamed up with the University of Strathclyde and Skillfluence on the programme.
Entrants should be aged 16-30 and from the farming community to apply.
The winning youngsters will work alongside researchers from SRUC, University of Strathclyde, and University of The West of Scotland to make their ideas a reality and pitch them at the Scottish Association of Young Farmer’s Club Agriculture and Rural Affairs Conference in November in front of peers and a panel of industry experts and business leaders.
The panel will be looking for projects that help to solve some of the big challenges happening in agriculture, such as animal welfare, energy consumption, the use of digital technology and even animal nutrition – the ideas can be big or small, researchers from across the spectrum will be teamed up with the ideas that suit their area of expertise to bring it to life.
The winning pitch will receive £250 of Amazon vouchers and any of the pitches could also be taken forward by the Digital Dairy Chain team and developed into a real research project with a grant of up to £10,000 through the Innovation Voucher scheme.
Pauline Murray, from the Digital Dairy Chain and University of Strathclyde, said: “It is crucial that through the Digital Dairy Chain project we engage with young farmers across the country as they will be the future workforce for the industry, we want them to be empowered to come forward and pitch their ideas and shape the future of farming.”
The Digital Dairy Chain Innovation voucher project has awarded 35 projects with £320,000 in total to tackle challenges such as educating young people on where their milk comes from, to reducing carbon emissions using novel technologies and finding innovative solutions to transporting milk to a vending machine at the perfect temperature.
n To find out more, go to www.digitaldairychain.co.uk/competition-for-young-farmers
