Harper student scoops travel award

Posted 18 August 2010

An outstanding agricultural student from Harper Adams University has been chosen as the first winner of The World Wide Sires’ Travel Award.

This is a new bursary established at the Newport-based University College by World Wide Sires UK (WWS), a leading supplier of bovine genetics.

Richard Lawrence, 22, from Grange-over-Sands near Kendal, Cumbria, has been studying  Agriculture with Animal Science BSc at Harper Adams for the past four years with a sandwich year working on a commercial farm in Canada. 

He scooped the travel prize for his project on cattle breeding, completed during the final year of his degree. The WWS’ Award will fund an all-expenses-paid trip for him to the USA, where he will visit a number of high-tech dairy farms, as well as the World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin.

This event runs for five days starting in late September and showcases the finest dairy cattle and the newest technologies available to the global dairy industry.

Richard said: “I’m really looking forward to visiting the States because so many agricultural innovations come from there.

“Many of the world’s top dairy sires also emanate from American bull studs, so I’ll be able to learn a lot and bring home plenty of new ideas to my family’s own dairy farm in south Cumbria.”

Professor Liam Sinclair, from Harper Adams University College, said: “We are very grateful to World Wide Sires UK for establishing and sponsoring this award at the College.

“An award of this calibre is very motivational for students, and we are delighted to have the, opportunity to collaborate with well-known company to facilitate knowledge transfer within the industry. Richard has been an outstanding student and he is a worthy recipient.”