On a beautiful spring day, our 2025 cohort made the trip to AF HQ from as far afield as Yorkshire and Somerset.
With a welcome coffee and homemade bacon roll on arrival, the group started to get to know each other.
We gave an overview of what to expect from FRESH AF ‘25 before heading out to a different area of our office to watch our highly polished performance of ‘What AF is’ by colleagues, complete with props!
Insights and information
Co-host and sponsor Bayer gave a presentation summarising their global capabilities, and many of our cohort were surprised to learn that not only do Bayer work in crop protection but also seed and pharmaceuticals.
Then, Dan Bradfield from FRESH AF sponsor Naked Marketing gave a masterclass on why and how to be good at producing a video blog. Something our cohort found very useful when later in the day we gave them their first task – to produce their own video blog.
Next up, an engaging session with Professor Andrew Fearne and his colleagues from our Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with a comprehensive analysis of how data can be harnessed for farming’s benefit. The cohort took part in the KTP’s fertiliser benchmarking pilot activity and provided the UEA team with thought-provoking feedback that they’ll incorporate into their development of the benchmarking tool.
After a delicious homemade lunch from our AF Chef Rob, we headed out onto Honingham Thorpe Farms by kind permission of owner James Alston and Farm Manager Harry Harrison for a competitive clay shoot.
Our clay shooting competition was an opportunity for team building and networking.
Ahead for 2025
By the day’s end the cohort was clearly getting on well together. It includes representatives of many farming and farm-related professions. In their review of their first FRESH AF day, they cited how much they liked being with each other, valued learning what AF does and how impressive they found the size and activity of AF HQ and how they look forward to the next events.
"It was a positive, informative and educational day surrounded by young, like-minded people and that gives me great encouragement..."
FRESH AF ‘25 will reconvene online in May, on farm with Dyson Farming in June with more events in the pipeline for September before the grand finale in November in London.
