The overall winner was Reddish Vale High School, Stockport, whose students enjoyed getting involved in faming-related activities, from tractor and digger driving to stock handling and learning about soil and grass management, genetics and animal nutrition.

The other finalists were Ripley St Thomas C of E Academy, Lancaster; St Christopher ' s Church of England High School, Accrington; Priestlands School, Pennington, Lymington, Hampshire, and The Queen Elizabeth Academy, Atherstone.

The weekend concluded with each school delivering a

presentation on why ' Farming is so much more than mud and wellies?' to a panel of judges made up of representatives from Coleg Llysfasi and LEAF Education.

Iain Clarke, Head of Llysfasi- part of Coleg Cambria- congratulated the pupils and teachers for their enthusiasm and creativity.

" It is absolutely incredible how these school groups took in so much information over the weekend," said Mr Clarke.

" Offering this hands-on experience is so valuable for education, linking food to farming and the environment and showing the many exciting career options in the agricultural sector.

" For many years we have worked with schools to showcase what farming has to offer, and this new partnership with LEAF Education was a great way to engage and build those relationships."

He added: " We hope the competition and the prize weekend in particular has equipped these

young people with a great appreciation of what farmers do and where their food comes from.

" We look forward to building on this year ' s success and would like to thank everyone who took part."

The winning team from Reddish Vale High School- Alex Jamieson, Megan Millington and Coby Stringer- revealed they had an " absolutely wonderful " weekend in North Wales.

LEAF ' s Regional Education Consultant Katy Pallace added: " It was inspiring to see how the young people responded to the opportununity to immerse themselves in livestock genetics, nutrition, precision technology, woodland management and much more, and also think about the big challenges of feeding a growing

population. " It was clear how much they enjoyed being around the animals, learning from the college staff and having fun."

The competition follows the record-breaking LEAF Open Farm Sunday in June, where up to 300,000 visitors flocked to farms across the UK, including 500 who attended the day of education at Llysfasi, forging even closer links with youngsters across the region.

For more information and to register an interest in next year ' s Innovation School of the Year in Food, Farming and Environment competition, visit www. cambria. ac. uk or call 0300 303 0007.

AG, a Chinese company which was founded in 2007, focuses on agricultural automation and research and development of unmanned devices. XAG is one of the world’ s largest agricultural drone manufactures with a largescale manufacturing and operational centre in China.

Over a period of 12 months XAG crop-spraying drones have flown 1.7 million times in total, served more than 700,000 Chinese farmers covering two million hectares of land.

Justin Gong, Co-Founder and Vice President of XAG, said:“ As the strategic partnership has been

officially established, I am sincerely looking forward to the collaborations between XAG and Harper Adams University to develop localised done and robotic solutions which suit the UK and European farmers.

“ We hope our technology can equally serve UK and European farmers, to help them improve productivity using sensors mounted on the drones to monitor the condition of the crop and subsequently only applying the chemical precisely on area requiring treatment.

“ In addition, we would like to devote more on researching about AI technologies and ground-based robots to free farmers’ hands, also to accelerate the popularisation of

drone application. With HAU’ s research strengths on agriculture and sustainable farming, I believe we can make the most of our potentials.”

Parmjit Chima, Head of Engineering at Harper Adams, said:“ It’ s great to see the university being recognised as a leader in agricultural drone and robotics technology by XAG in this mutually beneficial collaboration to develop new agri-tech solutions for farmers both at a national and international level."

Harper Adams Research Support and Project Lead, Debbie Heeks said:“ At present, UK legislation does not permit the use of drones for crop spraying. However, Harper is working closely with the relevant

authorities, such as CAA and others to enable trials involving drones for the first time in the country.

“ At the recent Agricultural Innovation Conference and Exhibition, XAG donated a high specification agricultural spraying drone to Harper. The P20 2018 Plant Protection UAS, named Barbara, is a fully autonomous system. It was presented to us by Justin Gong, Bridge Liu and Walter Chen.

“ It’ s a very clever system and it’ s very exciting that we have the opportunity to work with it and XAG. We hope that our work with the system will help strengthen the case for using crop spraying drones in the UK.”