University Farms

Between them, these four sites exploit the geography of West Wales to provide a spectrum of environmental challenges that are broadly representative of the growing conditions of approximately 80% of UK grasslands. Our enterprises include commercial and pedigree sheep flocks, a robotically milked dairy herd, dairy heifer replacement unit, beef fattening unit, and arable production focused on homegrown feeds including barley, wheat, oats and lupins.  

Within the Centre for Innovation Excellence in Livestock, we focus on the efficient production of sheep meat while minimising environmental impact. The National Plant Phenomics Centre is a unique facility for delivering breeding solutions and advances for key crop species. In addition, the Pwllpeiran Upland Research Platform provides a research resource to investigate upland farmed ecosystems, while the Aberystwyth Innovation and Enterprise Campus brings academia and businesses from the bioscience, agri-tech, and food and drinks sectors together on a brand new £40.5m campus. 

Our crop and grass breeding programmes are internationally recognised and play a major role in shaping UK and international agricultural production through the development of high sugar forage grasses, white and red clover forage protein crops and 65% of all oats in the UK are from varieties developed at Aberystwyth. First-year agriculture students manage arable crop plots grown side by side with the development of new commercial varieties.