€14m revamp at Lyons Farm

Construction is due to commence in 2025 on new agricultural research and education facilities at the UCD farm. It is a partnership project between FBD Holdings plc and FBD Trust CLG, both of which have pledged a philanthropic contribution of €6m in support of the facility, with UCD providing €8m. The ‘UCD FBD Agricultural Science Centre’ will enhance the college’s ability to deliver both teaching and research to the highest international standards, and will provide a centre where researchers, students, innovators and industry experts can collaborate on projects aimed at addressing the most pressing challenges facing modern farming and agriculture.
Karina outlines what is involved: “We’ve been working to a master plan for the last decade, and some of that has involved upgrading the animal facilities on the farm. We invested, along with industry partners, in a new dairy in 2016, as milk quotas were abolished. Since then, we have developed a new calf facility, and there is also a new multi-species grazing platform. Over the past two years, we have established the AgTechUCD Innovation Centre at Lyons Farm. And this latest development, the UCD FBD Agricultural Science Centre, will upgrade personnel accommodation on the farm in terms of decommissioning older buildings where students, researchers, academics and farm staff are based and move us to one site that will be co-located with the AgTechUCD Centre.”

Co-location benefits

That co-location of activities is important, Alex explains: “The concept of bringing all those people together in one location, on a farm, that’s the game changer. It encourages cross fertilisation between the innovators, the entrepreneurs, the students and the researchers.”
Karina agrees: “If you think of who we have here in Lyons and who we serve, the strategy makes good sense. UCD has the largest agricultural science programme and the only veterinary medicine programme in the country. From an undergraduate perspective, the students will have fantastic classroom and changing facilities and places to eat. We’ll be able to have the students here for longer periods. Keeping production agriculture as a core part of our programme is really important and research is another very significant part of what we do here. With the AgTechUCD Centre co-location, we’re going to have entrepreneurs based at Lyons Farm mixing with undergraduate and postgraduate students and that should lead to better education, better research, and better innovation.”

FBD role

Alex commends FBD’s support for the Lyons Farm project: “In this case, FBD stands for supporting agricultural science and assisting the industry and all those elements of teaching, research, innovation and outreach that they have been involved in over the years. Their contributions to UCD are really valued. The challenge of capital development is enormous. When it comes to a big project like this, the contribution of FBD is the difference between doing it and not doing it.”

A commercial farm

Karina emphasises the importance of Lyons as a working farm: “Unlike many university-based agricultural education faculties internationally, our model emphasises the promotion of production agriculture as an integral and important aspect of our agricultural degree courses. It is hugely important to us that production agriculture stays at the core of all our agriculture programmes. Undergraduate and postgraduate students see the workings of the farm. They’ll get to spend time here, but very importantly, the research and production strategies on Lyons Farm are brought back into the classroom in Belfield. It keeps us, as academics and researchers, grounded in real-life activities, and it allows the students to learn in, what we would describe as, a research-led teaching approach.”

Changes in agricultural training

Karina reflects on the changes she has seen as an agriculture educator and researcher: “I have seen huge developments since I graduated over 20 years ago, not only at UCD but in Irish agriculture, generally. In UCD, we’ve seen huge increases in student numbers. Lots of new agriculture programmes have been developed around the country over that time as well. The landscape of agriculture and agricultural education over that period has changed a lot. In farming terms, the abolition of milk quotas brought renewed vigour to that sector and now sustainability challenges are impacting all aspects of land use.
“There has also been a refocusing of research, advice and education with an emphasis on the environment. Sustainability is a core part of all our training modules now. I’m teaching dairy production, and sustainable dairy production is what we focus on. Obviously, in an Irish context, that’s efficient, grass-based milk production. The impact in terms of greenhouse gas emissions across beef, sheep, dairy has meant that we continue to evolve, using new as well as existing information. The students need that ongoing knowledge flow, because when they go out to work, companies expect from us that the students are up to speed.”

“The development of the Herd Health Hub at Lyons Farm is very exciting from a veterinary perspective as well, as we look to have students spend more time on the farm as part of their clinical training.”

Research endeavours

Karina expands on the research side of UCD’s agricultural remit: “It is very relevant and cutting edge in many instances. It includes dairy research we’ve been doing in terms of very high genetics in a grass-based system. We have done work on how farmers with fragmented land banks can build their dairy business. In the dairy calf-to-beef research, we are using our grazing platform to make comparisons of three different sward types, perennial ryegrass, perennial ryegrass white clover, and a six species multi-species sward that my colleagues, Tommy Boland and Helen Sheridan, have been leading. Lyons is a unique facility globally, in terms of being able to measure everything that goes into the milking platform and everything that comes out of it. Parts of the Lyons Farm are hydrologically isolated and, given the importance of water quality, we can carry out novel research in that regard. There are very few sites around the world that can do that.”

Balanced sustainability

The UCD agricultural philosophy includes a belief in balanced sustainability: “Nothing is sustainable unless we have the three legs of the equation,” says Karina. “If you over-focus on one area, perhaps taking an eye off economic sustainability, for example, farmers can’t earn a living and we’re going to see the negative consequences of that. On the other hand, we won’t have that license to operate unless we can prove our environmental credentials. There is huge activity across farms in terms of improving the environmental sustainability of farming enterprises. We’re now waiting to see the figures to back that up in terms of water quality improvement and greenhouse gas emissions reductions and so on.”
Alex sums up a central aspect of the latest development at Lyons Farm: “Our current lab facilities are old and struggle to cater for a modern research programme. This initiative will rectify that and allow us to improve our current work and engage in new activities. Because we have a teaching and a research farm, we are the envy of many of our colleagues around the world. We have some of the leading scientists in the world around crop science, animal nutrition, animal reproduction and grassland management and greenhouse gas emissions from ruminant livestock. Much of that is on the back of the work that’s been done at Lyons. We’re always looking to the future.”