The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has just published a 215-page paper comparing how UK regulation of novel foods and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) differs from that of non-EU countries.

As the FSA continued to build its science and evidence base after Brexit, it said the report - which was commissioned in summer 2020 – would help set out what systems operate around the world to regulate the international trade of these products.

“As a responsible and independent government regulator, with consumer interests at heart, it is vital that we continue to carry out research into all elements of the food system – and we are open and transparent in doing so," said FSA chief scientific adviser professor Robin May.

A new vertical farm will be built at Scotland's Rural College (SRUC) as part of a project seeking to grow more local produce by utilising land more efficiently.

The agricultural college will be the first higher education institute in Scotland to open a vertical farm for research and education. It will build the half million-pound facility at its King’s Buildings campus in Edinburgh next year.

The facility will grow nutrient-dense fruit and vegetables that have specific human health qualities. It will also analyse crop yield and growth rates with all resource inputs to compare their carbon footprint to other production systems.

Humanity's damaging impact on the climate is a "statement of fact", say UN scientists in a landmark study. The report says that ongoing emissions of warming gases could also see a key temperature limit broken in just over a decade. The authors also show that a rise in sea levels approaching 2m by the end of this century "cannot be ruled out".

But there is new hope that deep cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases could stabilise rising temperatures. This sober assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) features in a 42-page document known as the Summary for Policymakers.

The UK is already undergoing disruptive climate change with increased rainfall, sunshine and temperatures, according to scientists. The year 2020 was the third warmest, fifth wettest and eight sunniest on record, scientists said in the latest UK State of the Climate report. No other year is in the top 10 on all three criteria.

The experts said that, in the space of 30 years, the UK has become 0.9C warmer and 6% wetter. The report's lead author Mike Kendon, climate information scientist at the UK Met Office, told BBC News: “A lot of people think climate change is in the future – but this proves the climate is already changing here in the UK. As it continues to warm we are going to see more and more extreme weather such as heatwaves and floods.”

A group of 36 businesses from the potato and horticulture sector is putting pressure on Defra to sanction an alternative body, to replace some of the functions carried out by AHDB.

The group, known as the Growers’ Better Levy Group (GBLG), met Defra farming minister Victoria Prentis this week to press their case for a new grower-managed research agency.

Members want Defra to allow both a small statutory levy to fund critical research work in the fruit, vegetable, mushroom and potato sectors, and a larger voluntary levy to pay for other programmes of work. The group is also hoping to pave the way for knowledge exchange and extension services.

Consumers are struggling to differentiate between genome edited (GE) and genetically modified (GM) food, with over a quarter having ‘never heard of’ GE.

This is according to the Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) Consumer perceptions of genome edited food report, which sought feedback from members of the public to help to inform future food policy and communications if GE rules change.

The study, which involved members of the public across England, Wales and Northern Ireland in online workshops and activities, followed by a survey of more than 2,000 consumers, found that consumers tended to have low awareness and very low knowledge of GE food, with half saying they were not very or not at all informed on the technology.

A genetic tweak to the RNA molecule in plants can significantly increase crop yields as well as increasing drought tolerance, new research shows. In initial field tests, adding a gene encoding for a protein called FTO to both potato and rice plants increased their yield by 50%.

The plants grew significantly larger, produced longer root systems and were better able to tolerate drought stress. Analysis also showed that the plants had increased their rate of photosynthesis.

The research from the University of Chicago, Peking University and Guizhou University has been published in science journal Nature Biotechnology.

A new National Food Strategy has today called on the Government to invest £1bn in research and development to help improve the national diet, develop sustainable farming practices and protect the environment.

In a landmark report commissioned by the Government in 2019 as the basis for its post-Brexit food strategy, food entrepreneur Henry Dimbleby calls on the Government to commit to a historic package of reforms in order to build a ‘better food system for a healthier nation’.

The strategy highlights how poor diets contribute to around 64,000 deaths every year in England alone, costing the economy an estimated £74 billion, and sets out how diets will need to change over the next 10 years in order to meet the Government’s existing targets on health, climate and nature.

Food commodities are likely to become cheaper in the coming decade as productivity grows, but global targets on reducing hunger and emissions are unlikely to be met under current policies, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation and the OECD said on Monday.

Agricultural commodity prices have surged since last year due to a boom in Chinese imports and tightening inventories, leading the FAO last month to forecast record costs in 2021 for food importers.

However, prices of most agricultural commodities should fall slightly in real terms in the decade ahead, reverting to a long-term trend of improving production meeting rising demand from a growing population, the FAO and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said in a joint report.

Supermarket Tesco is putting pressure on the UK government to accelerate the use of insect protein in animal feed as a way of reducing the agri-food sector’s environmental footprint.

A new report, commissioned by Tesco and environment group World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), estimates that using insect meal to feed fish and livestock could cut the UK’s future soy footprint by one-fifth.

It suggests total demand for insect meal from the UK’s pig, poultry and salmon sectors could reach 540,000t/year by 2050, potentially replacing 16,000t of fishmeal and 524,000t of soya – equivalent to about 150,000ha of land.