Northern Ireland’s Agriculture Minister, Edwin Poots, has warned the UK could be ‘walking into a food crisis’. Speaking at the Oxford Farming Conference, Mr Poots said a crisis may not happen in the next five years, but Covid had shown it could happen ‘much more quickly than people anticipate’.

He made clear his Government’s post-Brexit agriculture policy was focusing heavily on maintaining domestic production in order to protect food security. The Northern Irish plan includes four key aims which farm support should be targeted at: increased productivity, improved resilience, environmental sustainability and a responsive supply chain.

Farmers and landowners in England could be paid to turn large areas of land into nature reserves, or to restore floodplains, under new government agriculture subsidies.

When the UK was part of the EU, farmers were given grants based on how much land they farmed. Following Brexit, the government has pledged to pay based on how farmers care for the environment. But environmental groups say the new plans lack detail and may not deliver.

In what the government describes as "radical plans", landowners and farmers will be allowed to bid for funding to turn vast areas of land - between 500 and 5,000 hectares - over to wildlife restoration, carbon sequestration, or flood prevention projects. "What we're moving to is a more generous set of incentives for farmers doing the right thing," Environment Secretary George Eustice told the BBC. "We can have both sustainable, profitable food production, and see a recovery for nature as well."

Farmers should focus on reducing their own emissions before considering the trading of their carbon to offset pollution in other sectors, according to researchers.

A new two-part report has been released today which focuses on quantifying, qualifying and ensuring good governance in the trading of natural capital and carbon.

It states that the market potential value of UK land-based carbon credits alone could equate to as much as £1.7 billion annually. However, the report's authors say that the governance of these markets is crucial to make the marketplace a credible and practical reality.

Farmers have hit out at Ed Sheeran’s plan to buy up as much UK land as possible for tree planting. The singer, who owns a £3.7m estate in rural Suffolk which he claims to have turned into a ‘wildlife meadow’, told BBC Radio London he was on a mission to offset the carbon footprint of his touring lifestyle. “I am trying to buy as much land as possible and plant as many trees as possible,” he said.

NFU deputy president Stuart Roberts welcomed Mr Sheeran’s acknowledgement of his unsustainable lifestyle, but warned tree planting was a ‘very poor choice’ of mitigation. “Rewilding some of the most sustainably farmed land on the planet will not only damage global food production disproportionately, but also undermine the drive by so many of us who want to lead the world in how to sustainably produce food,” he said.

Farmers could benefit from big data to help them reduce the environmental impact of fertilisers while maintaining quality yields and profits of wheat, according to new research.

The LINKDAPA project (LINKing multi-source Data for Adoption of Precision Agriculture) provides arable farmers with a low-cost, simple way to use big data to help highlight areas of their fields that are likely to give higher yields and grain protein content.

EIT Food, the world’s largest and most dynamic food innovation community, is supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). Now in its second year, the partnership sees the University of Reading working with other European academic institutions and agriculture firms.

The EU is falling behind in crop improvement because of its outdated policies on gene editing, say crop scientists. Japan, Canada, the US and now the UK all allow some gene editing of crops, but the EU remains lumbered by legislation written two decades ago. Gene editing allows the DNA of crops to be tweaked to boost sustainability.

It could generate crops less thirsty for pesticide and fertiliser inputs, as well as prepare crops for a future of increasing heat and drought stresses due to climate change. Also, pests and diseases are on the move, due to climate change, at a time when we are trying to reduce pesticide use.

The potential of gene editing is not a fringe viewpoint. “It is a breakthrough technology with huge potential,” says Dr Ismahane Elouafi, the chief scientist of the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO). “As a scientist, I don’t see it in the same category as GMOs [genetically modified organisms].” She would like to convince the EU to change its views, and she sees gene editing as crucial for improving food security and reducing global hunger.

Scientific leaders have urged the government not to abandon talks to enable the UK to participate in a €100bn European research programme. They have told BBC News that being cut out of EU research would "greatly disadvantage" British science.

Agreement in principle was reached, but UK involvement is now a bargaining chip in talks over Northern Ireland. In response the Science Minister, George Freeman, has said the UK is ready to set up its own scheme.

Scotland's food security could be 'eroded' if tighter tree planting safeguards on productive farmland are not implemented, NFU Scotland has warned.

While the union remains supportive of the integration of woodlands into farm businesses, it is 'fundamentally opposed' to largescale forestry expansion on productive farmland.

Such growth in recent times has been fuelled by non-agricultural businesses purchasing land for planting to offset carbon emissions and boost their green credentials. At the same time, this is eroding Scotland’s capacity to improve its self-sufficiency in food, NFU Scotland warned.

Climate change, access to labour and an increasing number of cyber attacks were among the possible threats to the UK’s food security listed in a new Government review.

The first Food Security Report, which Ministers are legally obliged to carry out once every three years under the terms of the Agriculture Act, also listed animal and plant diseases, soil degradation, rising input prices and the UK agricultural sector’s reliance on energy as possible future risks.

On a global scale, threats to food security included intensification of production which threatens biodiversity; high concentration of commodities in a few countries, such as soybeans in Brazil or rice in India and increasing demand for water.

Exports of UK food have continued to see a significant and persistent drop, new figures show, largely due to new barriers of trade with the EU and the pandemic.

Exports of food and drink are down £2.7bn (-15.9%) in the first three quarters of 2021 compared to pre-pandemic levels, Food and Drink Federation (FDF) figures show.

This substantial drop is largely due to a decline in sales to the European Union, accounting for a £2.4 billion (-23.7%) loss.