The UK’s leading agricultural research facility is facing a funding crisis with its future work in jeopardy, it can be revealed.
Rothamsted Research in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, is one of the oldest agricultural research institutions in the world, founded in 1843, and its research has been credited with preventing crop failures around the world.
A letter from Rothamsted’s director, Prof Angela Karp, seen by the Guardian, warned staff they would have to suspend “non-essential” work, with a hiring freeze and warning of a pay freeze.
Concerned scientists said they fear for their work, which depends on funding. About 350 scientists and 60 PhD students work at the facility. His research includes work on how farmers can be productive while to grow trees in their fieldsto find out how much carbon crops can store, and two national networks for monitoring insect populations in the UK.
Rothamsted made the news in 2012 when about 200 anti-genetic modification protesters occupied the site to fight against their research into a wheat crop that would deter aphids.
Rothamsted receives the majority of its funding as a core grant directly from the government’s UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) department, in five-year cycles. For the past two cycles, the institute’s funding has not included any inflation costs. The institute has been running at a loss for several years, with the government occasionally stepping in to supplement funds.
While the UK was in the EU, so was Rothamsted benefited from funding of the European Regional Development Fund, to which it is no longer entitled.
The situation is now understood to be at crisis point, with future operations by the facility uncertain.
Karp wrote: “I feel it is important for me to inform staff that, after a promising start, our financial position has unfortunately deteriorated in the latter part of last year. Despite all our continued efforts, including outstanding successes from many staff that we can be proud of, our grant targets won for the entire year were not what we had budgeted for.
“While free reserves have been maintained, they remain lower than we would like and highly susceptible to external factors, and we are currently considering how best to manage our operating model to put our long-term future on a more secure footing.
“We managed to some extent the challenges we faced during 2023 by rebalancing funds within the IAE envelope. However, from now on the mitigation steps we have taken cannot be relied upon and we do not have enough reserves that we can access immediately.”
Rothamsted planned his value to the UK economy is £3 billion a year because his work helps crop yields, both by determining which crops grow most efficiently and by developing plants that are tolerant of disease and extreme weather.
A major part of the government’s offer to farmers after Brexit, as they struggle with a lack of workers and new environmental rules for government payments, new research promises.
This will allow farmers to work more efficiently by using fewer inputs such as fertiliser, and also require less staff as innovations such as robotic vegetable pickers are developed.
A spokesperson for the UKRI said: “Although a core funder of Rothamsted Research, the BBSRC (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council) recognizes and upholds the institute’s legal and governance distinction. We encourage our strategically supported institutes to seek research funding from a wide range of funders to support research beyond those activities that we fund through a range of schemes.”
The top Rothamsted experiments
The Park Grass experiment
The Park Grass experiment is one of the longest experiments of modern science; it started in 1856 and has been going on ever since. What this shows most vividly is how biodiversity tumbles when you add fertilizer to hay meadows.
The study is being carried out in Rothamsted Park in Harpenden on 2.8 hectares (6.9 acres) of park land that has been in permanent grazing for at least 100 years. The goal was originally to find out how to improve hay yields by adding either inorganic fertilizers or organic manures.
However, scientists noticed within a few years that the diversity of wild species had greatly decreased because the fertilizer changed the soil pH and nutrient composition. On the unfertilized patches, scientists noticed 35-45 species, but there were only two or three on those treated with artificial fertilization. Once established to aid crop yields, parkgrass is now a very important source of evidence for ecologists and soil scientists.
Artificially fertilizer
Sir John Bennet Lawes, 1st Baronet, inherited the Rothamsted estate from his father. He founded the research center, which first began with his own experiments on the effects of manure on potted plants and field crops in the site. He further patented treating phosphate rock with sulfuric acid to produce superphosphate, a fertilizer, before opening a fertilizer factory.
Although they are now a bete noir of environmentalists, in part because of the park grass experiment that revealed their damage to nature, man-made fertilizers have helped feed the world.
The unveiling of the insect apocalypse
of Rothamsted Moth trap survey is ongoing since the 1960s. This provides the basis of moth data in the UK, which has revealed their decline. The moth traps provide the most comprehensive standardized long-term data on insects in the world.
The 16 traps provide farmers with information on the timing and size of aphid migrations to prevent heavy prophylactic use of insecticides.
Butterfly discoveries
Rothamsted discovered the secrets of the painted lady migration – the fact that British-born butterflies return to Africa from Northern Europe and the Arctic at the end of summer. It was Rothamsted radar that got pictures of the butterflies high in the sky, much higher than people thought they were flying.
In one of the biggest citizen science projects ever recorded, Rothamsted scientists found out where butterflies go when they migrate. The butterfly was known to migrate from the mainland to British shores in varying numbers each summer. But scientists did not previously know whether the painted lady made the return journey at the end of summer, like the closely related red admiral, or simply died in the UK.
They found that the painted lady did indeed migrate south each fall—but made this return trip at high altitudes, out of sight of butterfly observers on the ground. Radar records revealed that painted ladies flew at an average altitude of more than 500 meters on their southward journey and could reach speeds of 30 mph.
