Our Week in Agri-Tech

☀️ 🌔 🌠 🌊 🥵 🪱 Today’s vlog standing in front a compost pile ready for incorporation – helping build soil resilience for future extreme weather. Three different members deploying three different member benefits📣 Raising the profile of their technology🤝 Bring introduced to the right people for their business needs❓ Specific tech “asks” from a fruit farmer….watch the vid to find out if you can help!Also, catching up with Bitwise Agronomy and how their AI-enabled platform (“Barbara!”) has provided forecasting services for 12,000km of strawberries as well as work out where yield is being lost in strawbs and other berries. (Spoiler alert, it’s not always where the grower thinks it is). 🖥️ Taking the summer to sort out the database and do some crucial updates – making everyone’s life easier (we hope!)☎️ And finally, an exciting call from BBC Panorama…

It’s all about the not-so-humble (and thirsty) spud, where we’ve been considering the science behind growing better potatoes and in a week where the UK’s first gene-edited crop gained regulatory approval. Plus money, the robotics revolution and a great opportunity for our Early Career Innovators. This week:🥔 🍟 Lamb Weston processes 200,000 tonnes of potatoes a year, a great example of supply chain partners supporting their growers to produce an even better crop. We've also been talking soil moisture sensors and drip irrigation as possible mitigations in these dry, hot growing conditions. 🤖 💷 Calling all revolutionary robots as £20m funding is available as part of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Farming Futures R&D programme. (This week we sent our members a big funding summary of everything available right now).🍓 🏎️ When F1 meets agriculture….getting the robots to do the heavy lifting on fruit farms, with our latest new member Dynium.🎓 🚜 We have 2 FREE places up for grabs on the Farm Management Skills Programme at Harper Adams University, thanks to our partnership with the Society of Agriculture – get in touch to start your application!

Going all ornamental in this week’s vlog – about a sector that is worth £1.6bn to the UK economy. This week’s round-up from Agri-TechE is from Bury Lane Farm Shop, one of the UK’s leading growers of house plants and flowers – with an awesome PYO experience. Just what we needed for our team away day and teeing us up for the second of our Strategy Days. A huge thank you to Will and your team for the tour of the huge glasshouses full of luscious houseplants - and then letting us loose among the dahlias, agapanthus, delphiniums and more... armed with a bucket and a pair of secateurs…🌸 💮 🪷 🏵️ 🌹 🌻 🌼 🌷 🪻 💐 🪴 🌱 😍 And a serious conversation about the challenges associated with production of ornamentals at scale and discovering the most environmentally-friendly growth medium we have ever seen. All very topical as the Food and Farming Partnership Board is developing the first of its Sector Growth Plans (as recommended in the Farming Profitability Review), focussing on Horticulture. 🪲 Plus important discussions with the Animal and Plant Health Agency at Sandringham Flower Show – the Agency works tirelessly to keep the UK’s plants and animals free from invasive pests and diseases. Colorado Beetle and Yellow Legged hornets were our topic of discussion, but we also touched on Xylella. There is no room for complacency, particularly with a changing climate. 

➡️ All change in the UK Government - including the Department now responsible (again) for funding science, innovation and technology. 👀 Check out our video that landed this week where I talk to Sarah Evered about farmer readiness for dynamic alignment with the EU within Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.💭 Big thoughts with Niall Mottram of Cambridge Consultants about a potential new funding mechanism for innovation in agri-food, inspired by the energy sector - watch this space! (and thank you Mary Nicholls for wise counsel). 💡 Having input into a new report being undertaken by The Royal Society about the future of food - between now and 2100. 🙏 Massive thanks to Louise Border and James FRY for offering the gorgeous Mills & Reeve office in #Cambridge to host our Strategy Day. And you gave us food for thought in your into about quantum computing and the alignment of regulation between life sciences and agri-food.....

Bag yourself a smart grad trainee, discover how it feels to be in charge of a robot, the UK's 5 year commitment to #agritech innovation, and welcome to one of our new members – this week’s round-up from Agri-TechE.🎓 We announce a leap forward in the way we support agritech learning and development through a new partnership with MDS Ltd. Apply to host a trainee and also be part of tech-ing up the training for the next cohort!🫵 Have your say in the planned Engine for Dual-Use Growth and Excellence, bringing together agri-tech and defence, through some work underway by Grounded Research | Market Research and Strategic Development📣 UK Research and Innovation releases its 5 year strategic plan – a commitment to agri-tech, with an emphasis on precision technologies and engineering biology. 💷 “If you are a farmer looking to adopt new technologies…..” – the #ADOPT programme funded by Defra and delivered by Innovate UK is here to help. And for the long(ish) term. 🤖 The AgXeed robot…..as seen on Clarkson’s Farm – remarkably responsive and light on its feet (I mean, tracks). Great day with NFU Mutual looking to the tech of tomorrow. 🚀 Agri-Tech Met Space this week at our event, great discussions across sectors…..any idea how much it costs to send a can of Coke into low earth orbit? (no Mentos needed 🧨).🙌 Welcome to a new member SKALENE LIMITED – developing real-time, non-contact monitoring of pellets, feed, grain, seeds etc as they move through tubes and pipes to keep them flowing freely. 

In this week’s round-up we announce our #REAP2026 keynote speaker and give you a heads-up about the next in our “Agri-Tech Meets…” event series. And did you bump into any of the Agri-TechE team at Fruit Focus?This week:📣 We proudly announce Anjali Goswami FRS, Defra’s Chief Scientific Advisor as our REAP 2026 keynote speaker and the wider agenda, plus some opportunities to leverage the REAP conference for your organisation 🍎 🍓 🍐 Did you go to #FruitFocus? We're eagerly awaiting the Sector Growth Plan for Horticulture, currently in development by the Farming and Food Partnership Board - will it bear fruit (pun intended) for the industry?🚀 Go into (low earth) orbit with our Agri-Tech Meets...Space event - in partnership with Space East. https://www.agri-tech-e.co.uk/civicrm/event/info/?reset=1&id=27333

This week's round-up from the Groundswell Agriculture festival. I share my reflections, pick out one of my fave talks of the show and welcome a new member in this week's vlog from Agri-TechE.⛺ 😎 A more considered set of conversations at Groundswell this year - and Happy 10th Birthday to the Festival. Even the Secretary of State Emma Reynolds loved it!🫶 Inspired by the session by Pasture for Life about data capture and hard metrics not always collecting and quantifying what farmers instinctively see, sense and feel. "A lack of data doesn't necessarily mean that something isn't true." A nice segue into the theme for our own #REAP2026 conference in November!🫵 Lots of talk about the ADOPT programme (FYI Chris Lyons is your Go-To Person at Innovate UK about all things ADOPT) - this really is the way for farmers to de-risk their decisions to embrace new innovation. Great session chaired by Tom MacMillan with Lindsay Roome, Simon Pearson MBE and Bryony Gittins. 🪟 Window 1 opened of the new Sustainable Farming Incentive round. Brace yourself for the mad scramble!📣 Welcome to a new member BionemaUk  Group Limited - Groundswell was a perfect setting for the discussions about the technologies they develop and manufacture for biocontrol in agriculture.....Plus we recorded some podcasts and did some filming which we'll be dropping over the next few weeks, but special thanks to:David Linton | Cristóbal Uauy | Sarah Evered | Russell Batten | Louise PennAlso a shout out to the amazing little Agri-TechE team - Kate Brunswick | Becky Dodds | Kristina Kalinina | Deryn Gant | Sophie Butler | Laura Bouvet

Lots of Defra news to share, plus we talk about trade-offs around global food security, and consider if high-input agriculture still make sense. Plus we welcome some of our latest new members.  This week in the Agri-TechE round-up: 📣 Defra’s been busy this week. The Farming Roadmap has landed, and we discover what the Government thinks about the 2025 Farming Profitability Review as it releases its official response. Plus £53m more investment in the Farming Innovation Partnership. 💭 Global food security is more than a multi-disciplinary challenge – the discussions being led within the University of Cambridge around resilient, healthy and sustainable food systems. We talked about the balance between diversity vs uniformity, availability vs sustainability, efficiency vs redundancy….where are the trade-offs? ❓ The Royal Norfolk Show's brilliant "Great Debate" this year asks if high-input agriculture has had its day - and kicks off with a thought-provoking ice-breaker question....... 🤖 Our colleague Becky Dodds helped bring engineering and farming together - mixed with a dash of skills discussions - future at the the AgriFoRwArdS Agri-Robotics Futures Showcase in #Lincoln And welcome to some of our latest new members: 🥔 🍟 Diced, crinkled, curly or straight? We welcome global potato and fries grower and processor, Lamb Weston.  💡 🪴 Control your lighting and energy in glasshouses using wireless mesh – like a smart remote control and health tracker for greenhouse lights, with NETVION.  📊 🚜 A global public record for farm evidence is being built by Proof - working across enterprises, seasons, systems and outcomes. Starting with #biologicals and #biostimulants in #arable agriculture.  

Rounding up the Agri-TechE week on farm, courtesy of Home Farm Nacton – the 43rd Demonstrator Farm for LEAF (Linking Environment And Farming).   Also this week: -         Applications open for early stage #agritech ventures to present at our Focus on Finance event (Sept 17th – all welcome). -         All eyes looking to Groundswell Agriculture – we chat to two of our members as they make their final preparations for next week’s Regenerative Ag Festival – we’ll be there, come and see us on stand M24. -         Talking financial resilience through cyber security with other business founders thanks to EY. Yikes.