Image: Our Summer 2023 Nuffield Ireland travellers at the beginning of their GFP in Singapore: David Fennelly (2023), Pat Collins (2022), Tommy Murray, Bryan Daniels (both 2023) and Lance Woods (2022). The five then split up to travel to destinations on five continents.

Summer 2023 Global Focus Programmes

From late May to late June, five of our 2022 and 2023 Scholars travelled on three different Global Focus Programmes, four-week pre-organised, intensive itineraries through four to five countries on several continents.

Our Scholars’ destinations included Singapore, Borneo, Japan, India, Qatar, Brazil, Tasmania, Northen Australia, the US (Washington DC, California, Delaware, Pennsylvania), Israel, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Norway.

The itineraries consist of visits of agribusinesses, farms, government agencies and policy makers, and the discovery of new cultures, customs and cuisines, in developed and developing countries. They involve Scholars managing the practicalities of their travels and day to day life in close quarters with up to 15 fellow-Scholars from diverse backgrounds.

GFPs are exceptional opportunities for personal discovery and growth, as well as teamwork, learning to respect others as well as the cultures, mores, religions, even food habits of the people hosting the visits. While they permit some research relevant to Scholars’ topics, they are mostly about developing leadership skills and learning about the realities of global agriculture.

All five Scholars have returned home in July, with many now undertaking their personal travels, using their newly developed Nuffield network to make the most expert contacts and study their chosen topics in the most relevant locations around the world.

The Scholars learned about how Singapore is less than 20% self-sufficient for food, with strong ambitions to produce more; the challenges of palm oil production in Borneo; met with indigenous food producers impacted by climate change and economic sustainability challenges; visited farmers in Australia and the US responding to very different environmental requirements; found that regenerative agriculture and multispecies swards are practices developing in many regions; saw a growing interest in insect production for both animal feed and human food; and much besides.