UK farming is at a critical point, with farmers facing spiralling costs, inheritance tax changes and changing weather patterns, but could agri-tech be the solution to all of these problems?

For a number of years, emerging technologies in the agricultural industry have been pointed to as an all-encompassing solution to these growing challenges, but whilst farmers are open to innovation in the methods they use, often this investment has not directly led to significant changes or improvements on the ground.

A new report from Barclays has identified the barriers holding back agri-tech on farms and also assessed what government can do to make the sector more effective.

The government's ambition to develop the "world’s most effective border by 2025" was sharply criticised in a parliamentary session on Tuesday (25 March).

Experts highlighted to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee that growers faced inefficiencies, high costs, and inadequate communication from the government.

Nigel Jenney, chief executive of the Fresh Produce Consortium (FPC), described the reality starkly: “Our world-leading border is currently the most expensive and least efficient globally.”

The UK government has unveiled its first National Action Plan (NAP) on pesticides in more than a decade, aiming to reduce environmental harm and enhance sustainable farming practices.

The plan sets a target to reduce pesticide-related environmental risks by 10% by 2030, focusing on minimising the impact of pesticides on human health and the environment, while supporting food production.

The NAP, which includes a commitment to enhance integrated pest management (IPM) techniques, encourages farmers to adopt nature-based solutions and alternative methods, such as crop rotation and biopesticides, to manage pests without heavily relying on chemical pesticides.

The government has launched a new Food Strategy Advisory Board (FSAB) as part of its efforts build a more resilient, sustainable, and equitable food system.

The strategy aims to "restore pride" in UK food by ensuring a system that maintains food security while providing more easily accessible and affordable healthy food.

It also hopes to make food production more sustainable in order to boost nature, while strengthening the entire food supply chain in the event of geo-political shocks and a changing climate.

Fruit and vegetable growers have spoken out in dismay after the government announced it would close the long-established Fruit and Vegetable Aid Scheme to producer organisations (POs) at the end of the year.

The scheme has provided £40m in matched funding for POs within the horticultural sector to support innovation and collaboration between producers and help market products.

There are concerns within the industry that, without this funding, the sector will face even more challenges, and the UK could become more reliant on imports.

A pioneering £1 million project which will help transform dairy cow slurry into crop fertilisers and water has been launched by Harper Adams University and industry partners elentecBio, Merigan, Stoic Options and Mastek,.

This research project was funded by Defra as part of their Farming Innovation Programme Nutrient Management competition, and is managed via Innovate UK, the UK's innovation agency. It will develop elentecBio's novel technology at farm-scale to separate water for further use and recover phosphorous, nitrogen and organic matter from cattle slurry.

The technology works through electrocoagulation, a treatment technology that adds an electrical charge to water as a way of recovering nutrients. The separated nutrients can be applied to growing crops, instead of spreading high-water content, low nutrient slurries or synthetic fertilisers.

After months of stalled talks, EU ambassadors backed a compromise text on Friday by the Polish Presidency to move forward with negotiations on new rules facilitating the use of some gene-editing techniques (NGTs) in the EU.

NGTs– the most notable being the Nobel Prize-winning CRISPR-Cas9 – allow scientists to edit a crop’s genome to achieve specific traits, such as increased resistance to disease or extreme weather.

Currently, these technologies are subject to the EU’s strict GMO regulation, making their commercialisation in the bloc nearly impossible. Poland introduced the proposal in late February, scrapping patent restrictions on gene-edited crops – one of the most divisive aspects of the draft legislation.

Meat, dairy and sugar grown in a lab could be on sale in the UK for human consumption for the first time within two years, sooner than expected.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) is looking at how it can speed up the approval process for lab-grown foods. Such products are grown from cells in small chemical plants.

UK firms have led the way in the field scientifically but feel they have been held back by the current regulations.

Many of us have been guilty of binning a mushy, overripe banana – but now scientists say they have a solution with the launch of a genetically engineered non-browning banana.

The product is the latest in a series of gene-edited fruits and vegetables designed to have a longer shelf life. Scientists say the technology is emerging as a powerful new weapon against food waste, which occurs globally on an epic scale.

The banana, developed by Tropic, a biotech company based in Norwich, is said to remain fresh and yellow for 12 hours after being peeled and is less susceptible to turning brown when bumped during harvesting and transportation.

British farming needs a "180-degree, tyre-screeching reset" to help farmers produce "more from less" against a backdrop of increasing global uncertainty. This is according to former science minister George Freeman MP, who is now chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Science and Technology in Agriculture.

Speaking at Agri-TechE’s Challenge Convention event, he said this was now even more urgent with the impact of climate change, war in Ukraine and geopolitical instability. He warned of mass migration and civil unrest if the world did not meet the challenge of feeding a population of 10bn people by 2050, but on the same amount of land and using half as much water and energy.