The UK livestock sector relies heavily on imported soya for protein feed with most of it coming from countries like Brazil, Canada and the US.
This raises serious concerns about carbon emissions, deforestation and supply chain vulnerability.
Lupins, a nitrogen-fixing legume with high protein content, could be a home-grown alternative. But they’ve struggled to gain traction in the UK due to agronomic hurdles, inconsistent yields and limited market demand.
The Lupin Project combined regenerative farming trials with cutting-edge gene-editing research to explore how lupins could be grown more reliably and sustainably in the UK, bringing together researchers and regenerative farmers to trial lupins at scale using both conventional and next-generation methodologies.