Grassland Resilience for Net Zero: Sustainable practices for shaping the future of UK land use

Temporary and permanent grasslands cover >70% of UK agricultural land and provide a vital natural asset for achieving national and international climate, nature, and biodiversity targets, whilst providing feed for ruminants that convert human-inedible forage into nutrient-dense food. UK grasslands contain and protect in excess of 500 megatonnes of carbon, whilst soil carbon sequestration, mainly under grassland, covers 50% of agriculture's total mitigation potential. The IPCC emphasise that agricultural systems must prioritise improving grazing land and livestock management and the Committee on Climate Change highlights that a 4% increase in UK forest area could abate 24% of annual agricultural greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) by 2050. Therefore, optimising grassland use (e.g. through upland grazing, low-carbon and methane-mitigating forages, multispecies legume-rich pastures, silvopasture, agroforestry, biomass production, woodland establishment) could help the UK realise its mitigation potential whilst saving >£1.6billion/year. It is therefore urgent to re-appraise grassland land-use and promote realistic policy-making solutions that enable large-scale, long-term, integrated grassland management as part of a UK agriculture's transition to net zero. The project will provide crucial evidence for this process, by bringing together leading innovators in transdisciplinary research on sustainable and resilient livestock systems, to address the transformation of UK grasslands for net zero whilst also improving soil health, biodiversity, and the economy. This will be delivered through five transdisciplinary work packages (WPs): WP1 will facilitate co-designed scenarios and net zero pathways to answer the question of how we can deliver sustainable, acceptable, and accessible land use for net zero in UK grassland areas. WP2 will support 6 innovative grassland management participatory clusters - exploring mitigation measures on-the-ground in all four devolved nations to assess whether existing agroecological innovations provide viable and effective strategies for achieving net zero on grassland-based farms. WP3 will utilise controlled trials for assessing the mitigation potential of different grassland management innovations by measuring the GHG outputs following their implementation. Close interaction between experiments, industry partners and wider stakeholder will be fostered throughout all tasks to ensure relevant experimental assessment of grassland solutions. WP4 will provide sustainability assessment of innovations and farm systems for improved policy design and improved the understanding of system interactions and trade-offs between land use, environment, profitability, and social well-being when adopting grassland innovations. WP5 will provide project coordination, communication, dissemination, and demonstration, overcoming barriers to implementation and enabling transformation of grassland use. In summary, the project will provide innovation assessments, co-creation of adoption pathways and policy-making solutions (assessed via Life Cycle Assessments, Global Farm Metric, experimental trials, land-use scenario modelling, stakeholder engagement) and will embrace both unique and common characteristics in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland to develop devolved policies that will target public goods and regulatory mechanisms, protect natural and cultural heritage; and support the Net-Zero Growth Plan.