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Professor John Gilliland OBE, speaking at the Future Farmer Programme event in December 2023.

Recently appointed to the EU’s Soil Mission Board and a special advisor to the UK’s Agriculture Horticulture Development Board (AHDB), John Gilliland is a willow and livestock farmer from N. Ireland, whose farm has independently been verified to be “Beyond” Net Zero. He is also the Professor of Practice in Agriculture and Sustainability at Queen's University Belfast; and chair of the innovative, EIP-Agri funded, farmer led, carbon farming project, .

As an alumni of the US International Visitor Leadership Program, John Gilliland is highly respected and recognised as an excellent leader and communicator across the breadth of the Agri Food and Sustainable Land Management Sectors. This has included presentations to the Joint EU Agriculture & Environment Council, Bratislava, and the Global Summit on Soil Security, Sydney, where he was awarded “Best Paper.”

He has been an award winning farmer in Ireland; President of the Ulster Farmers Union; a Non Executive Director of the Scottish Rural College (SRUC), and an Energy Regulator in N. Ireland; while at the same time, he has been a policy adviser for Devolved, National and European Governments on Biotechnology, Climate Change and Sustainability. In particular, for seven years, John chaired the UK’s Rural Climate Change Forum, reporting directly to the Secretary of State of DEFRA, London, and supporting the UK at COP15 in Copenhagen. While Director of SRUC in Edinburgh, he helped set up their very successful Carbon Management Centre.

For seven years as Director of Agriculture and Sustainability of the Irish livestock nutrition company, Devenish, John led the development of the their research farm, the Lands at Dowth, transforming it into both a Lighthouse Farm for WUR’s (Wageningen University & Research) Global Network of Lighthouse Farms, and a Living Lab, in a, with five PhD students, in partnership with WUR and UCD, and funded by the EU’s Marie Curie Programme  (source: Prof. John Gilliland – )