Foot and Mouth Research

FMD Relevant Research at Macaulay

"Over the years our research programme has been designed to provide information on a range of options for the use of land. We have technical information on alternative enterprises such as novel livestock systems like cashmere goats and fine-wool sheep to multiple objective land use systems like agroforestry as well as a range of tools to assess the financial, environmental and social consequences of different options and farm plans for both upland (HillPlan) and lowland (LADSS) farms." - Iain Wright Macaulay Land Use Research Institute (Programme Manager for 'Land Use Systems').

The Macaulay Land Use Research Institute is engaged in a number of research activities that are likely to produce information of value to those developing strategies for the post-outbreak future. These are :

1. the building and use of software decision support tools for land use planning and farm system optimisation:
   • LADSS (showing an example evaluation of three scenarios for potential change on a hypothetical fmd-victim farm)
   • HillPlan (showing the relationship between livestock activities in the Scottish Uplands and conservation goals)
2. the economic appraisal of the economy-wide impacts of the outbreak using a computable general equilibrium model
3. the evaluation of groundwater and soil pollution
4. assessment of land uses for environmental and biodiversity objectives.
5. developing techniques for the evaluation of landscape for visual and other 'intangible' benefits.
6. development of novel land uses such as renewable energy generation and agroforestry.
7. The developments of new land uses are supported by research into environmental auditing and sustainibility accounting of farm enterprises.