Former Exeter student given £270,00 to fund agriculture project

A recent graduate from the University of Exeter has secured more than £270,000 in funding from Oak Foundation for a regenerative agriculture project in the Mount Darwin district of Zimbabwe.

The project involves transforming part of Agriculture Research Trust’s (ART) farm into a centre of excellence for training and demonstrating the social and environmental outcomes of adopting regenerative agricultural practices. The other aspect of this exciting project entails working with smallholder farmers in the Mount Darwin district, by supporting them to implement agroecological practices on land recently cleared from mines by the Halo Trust.

Hugo Winkfield graduated in Biological Sciences from the University of Exeter in July 2023. In the third year of his programme, he took up a work placement opportunity in Zimbabwe, which ignited his passion for research to transform agricultural practices.

He will lead the research component of an ART farm regenerative agriculture project. The research will contribute to building a body of evidence on the value of regenerative agriculture to influence national policy in Zimbabwe. 

The funding runs for two years or more, and aims to transform agricultural practices towards becoming regenerative, putting back life into the degraded soils to produce healthy foods.