Professor Tom MacMillan, Elizabeth Creak Chair in Rural Policy and Strategy at Royal Agricultural College reflects on five years of being the Elizabeth Creak Chair in Rural Policy and Strategy.
The Elizabeth Creak Charitable Trust was founded in memory of Elizabeth Creak, a pioneering farmer. I am fortunate to hold a professorial chair funded by the Trust. As I near the end of my initial five-year term, this is a good moment to reflect on what the funding has achieved.
My brief has been to enhance the university’s impact. In a context where fragmentation can feel like one of the big barriers to tackling the challenges facing farming – within the industry, policy and research – I’ve approached that by getting us involved in projects that try to make connections and break deadlocks.
The most visible of these was the National Food Strategy, led by Henry Dimbleby MBE. This reported in 2021, making 14 recommendations to get the UK’s food and farming on track to feed the nation healthily and sustainably. I was one of the team who worked over two years to help develop the evidence and recommendations.
Before that, and since, I and others involved in the RAU have supported another independent inquiry, the Food, Farming & Countryside Commission. It finds common ground among farmers, conservationists, nutritionists and rural communities. One of the Commission’s key contributions has been to advance proposals for a land use framework in England, a version of which is now being put into practice by government. Alongside initiatives such as these where the RAU’s role has been to lend a hand, the Creak Trust’s funding has also enabled others where we have taken a lead. The most significant is founding the Centre for Effective Innovation in Agriculture (CEIA), jointly with the Creak chairs at four other universities. It aims to make sure that the effort and money invested in the name of agricultural innovation and ‘transformation’ actually makes a useful difference on the ground.
The Trust’s funding has also helped the RAU strengthen its own research programme by providing a springboard for our involvement in wider projects. These range from the National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise, to the Agri-Food for Net Zero Network, each joining up research efforts across the country around their respective themes. We also lead a project investigating what one emerging technology, cultured meat, could mean for UK farmers.
I’m hopeful that these efforts make good on my initial brief, increasing the impact of the RAU and universities in our sector. If they do, it is thanks to the freedom afforded by the Trust’s support, which has allowed the RAU to help or step forward as the circumstances demand. I am delighted, and grateful, that the Trust has renewed its funding for the post for a further five years.
