Climate change in the Mediterranean is set to threaten the UK’s supply of fresh fruit and vegetables, according to a new report from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU).

The group warned extreme heat in the region has already led to drought, damaged crops and reduced yields, with food shortages and price rises expected in future.

In 2022, just over a quarter of UK food imports – worth more than £16bn – came from the Mediterranean.

Moredun Research Institute are leading a project to develop a parasitic worm vaccine. Part of an international partnership with the University of Glasgow, the James Hutton Institute, and Australian based, University of New England the project, which is worth £6 million, will be carried out over five years.

The vaccine will target gastrointestinal nematodes, which cost the UK sheep industry approximately £4 per lamb. The parasitic worms live in the gut and have a major impact on animal production, in terms of reduced weight gain and treatment costs.

Improved rural connectivity could boost the UK economy by over £65 billion, new economic modelling has found.

The report, titled ‘The Great Rural Revival’, addresses four sectors central to the UK’s rural economy – tourism, agriculture, manufacturing, and small businesses.

It finds connectivity improvements could boost rural employment by 6.8%, creating an additional 284,000 new jobs.

European dairy cooperative Arla has started to pay out a monthly incentive to its farmer owners based on their sustainability efforts.

The incentive is a data-driven and science-based points system that rewards climate activities and other environmental initiatives on farms.

Arla expects to pay out €2.2 billion (US$2.39 billion) until 2030 for the farmers’ sustainability efforts.

When Canadian dairy farmer Ben Loewith's calves are born next spring, they will be among the first in the world to be bred with a specific environmental goal: burping less methane.

Loewith, a third-generation farmer in Lynden, Ontario, in June started artificially inseminating 107 cows and heifers with the first-to-market bull semen with a low-methane genetic trait.

"Selectively breeding for lower emissions, as long as we're not sacrificing other traits, seems like an easy win," Loewith said.

A low-tech solution to help farmers make more money from their muck could also help reduce the spread of antibiotic resistance from sewage and manure, scientists say.

Adding conductive materials, such as biochar, to anaerobic digestors when processing sewage sludge and manure on farms has been proven to help boost biomethane production, which can then be sold.

But now it’s also been found that adding relatively low-cost additive materials like biochar to the process could also help reduce the prevalence of antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs) by more than 90%.

The NFU has said it is 'shocking' that just over half of the food eaten by the British public is grown in the UK.

The finding is included in a new EFRA committee report, which also found that the number of households experiencing food insecurity was at a greater proportion than it was during the pandemic

One fifth of households experienced moderate or severe food insecurity in January 2023, according to the food security report.

Fourteen research projects are to receive a share of £9m of government funding to tackle endemic disease in the UK livestock sector, to improve the productivity, health and welfare of animals.

Phase two of the £11.5m Endemic Livestock Diseases Initiative has made grants available of between £500,000 to £1m for each project to tackle challenges associated with endemic disease in livestock.

The projects span the breadth of the livestock sector, encompassing pigs, poultry, beef, sheep and dairy, with significant emphasis on digital agriculture and machine learning. Nine of the projects incorporate cutting-edge technologies to advance disease monitoring, diagnosis and prevention.

The government has been told by a cross-party group of MPs to commit to a 'sea change' in its attitude towards food security. The new report, by EFRA Committee, pointed out that only a little over a half (54%) of the food eaten in the UK is home-grown or home reared.

It said shocks to international trade such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Brexit had exposed some of the UK’s vulnerabilities. MPs who sit on the Committee urged the government to develop a suite of key food security indicators – from farm inputs to retailer outputs – to monitor and ensure food security.

A government failure to step in and protect the domestic production of nitrogen fertiliser and ammonia poses a major food security risk, MPs have warned.

Nitrogen fertiliser is used by UK farmers on 89% of crop area for tillage crops such as wheat, barley, potatoes and sugar beet and 59% of grass, but there is only one producer in the country – US-owned CF Fertilisers.

This company, which recently announced it would permanently close its Billingham site for producing ammonia, used to make fertiliser, only meets about 40% of UK need.