SAC Rural Policy Centre

Tony Waterhouse is Head of SAC's Hill and Mountain and Beef Research Centres. Tony's research focuses on livestock systems, with a particular focus on the uplands. He currently leads programmes of work which look at the interactions between livestock farming systems, economic viability and environmental issues. He took a lead role in the publication of the Rural Policy Centre's Farming's Retreat from the Hills Report in 2008. Tony has overall management responsibility for SAC's upland farms of Kirkton/Auchtertyre at Crianlarich and the Bush Farms in the Pentland Hills near Edinburgh.

Tony has been involved in practical research that has sought to improve returns to sheep producers via genetic improvement, through improved nutrition and healthcare. Recently he has considered how different elements of extensive livestock production might benefit from integration with woodlands and how labour, systems and animal welfare interact. On the environmental front, a strong background in the understanding of grazing impacts on biodiversity related issues has always been a key area of expertise and a central area of interest, both practically and through bio-economic modelling.

Tony also leads work on measuring greenhouse gas emissions in beef and sheep systems, linking together grazing studies, through more intensive measurement protocols in controlled environments, to estimating the impact within full livestock systems and whole farms. Underpinning much of the research is a long-term background in participative research usually with land managers and farmers, based around the premise that the influence of people is of greater significance than the traditional view of animal science being about animals, health and nutrition. 

Key elements of the Hill and Mountain Centre research include: extensive sheep production systems; labour efficiencies and the use of technology to improve management; the role of grazing on a range of ecosystem services (mainly biodiversity factors, carbon and food production); understanding extensive cattle grazing using GPS and other sensor technology, and exploring the role of this type of technology in producing new management tools; and systems for improving both profit and greenhouse gas emissions in extensive sheep systems.

Key elements of the Beef Research Centre include: measuring methane output from cattle (and sheep) of different genotypes in housed and grazed systems; finding predictors and proxies for greenhouse gas output; use of sensors to assess welfare, feed intake, growth and residual feed intake in growing and finishing cattle; meat eating quality; and linking temperament effects across the generations in beef cattle.

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