More than 1,000 awards, claimed to be worth a total of £1.2m, have been given to people working in agriculture and the food supply chain as part of a bursary-based programme run by AgriFood Advanced Training Partnership (AATP).
“Feedback from those who have taken advantage of the funding available for training, has been fantastic,” said AATP’s manager, Deborah Kendale (pictured above), adding that funding comes from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) with a further £800,000 currently available for allocation by the end of 2016.
Courses range from one-day workshops to post-graduate diplomas, and attendees say they have used the training to boost sales, develop new products and find solutions to problems within their businesses.
The AATP programme was launched three years ago and offers a bursary of 50% towards the cost of courses covering a range of areas from plant science and feed nutrition to food manufacturing and business leadership.
Roughly one third of training so far has been in courses involving producing and processing animals, one third relates to food and nutrition and the balance focuses on crops, agronomy and business management.
