A new vertical farm is being launched in South East London by Vertical future, which could mark a giant leap forward in food production efficiency for the sector.

The innovative farming method requires no pesticides, herbicides or fungicides, and minimal human interaction, and, when implemented correctly uses far less of the planet’s resources and significantly less water, while producing much closer to the point of consumption.

Vertical Future’s new 1,500m3 farm provides a yield increase of 172% per m3 and approximately 60% less energy consumption compared to other vertical farms, making it one of the most efficient in the world.

The much-loved combination of beer and crisps is being harnessed for the first time to tackle climate change. Crisps firm Walkers has adopted a technique it says will slash CO2 emissions from its manufacturing process by 70%.

The technology will use CO2 captured from beer fermentation in a brewery, which is then mixed with potato waste and turned into fertiliser. It will then be spread on UK fields to feed the following year's potato crop.

A new virtual centre will see five agricultural universities work together to address the gap between scientific research on innovation and real-life farming experience.

The Centre for Effective Innovation in Agriculture (CEIA) will look at how research and development investment can best support innovation to be adopted by farmers.

The centre will create practical guides for government and policy makers about effective agricultural research and how to target research funds effectively.

Meeting the UK's world-leading climate change target will be a "colossal challenge", a government spending watchdog has warned. The National Audit Office says it will affect the way we work, travel, heat our homes - even how much meat we eat.

In a report it says the cost of cutting CO2 is highly uncertain, but the cost of allowing temperatures to rise would probably be greater. The PM has vowed to cut emissions by 68% by 2030 based on 1990 levels.

A map depicting soil fertility every 30 metres across Africa could boost the livelihoods and human health across 54 nations, international scientists have said.

Produced by iSDA, a social enterprise founded by Rothamsted Research, World Agroforestry and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, the map charts 3.4 million square miles of potential agricultural land and has gathered data on acidity, organic content and nutrient levels from every field.

A world first, it is hoped the map will help improve harvests and target nutrients as well as advise farmers about yield forecasting, crop suitability and fertiliser application.

Genome editing techniques that modify the DNA of plants do not pose more hazards than conventional breeding or techniques that introduce new DNA into a plant, an EFSA assessment concludes.

The scientific opinion focuses on plants produced using different genome editing techniques: site-directed nuclease-1 (SDN-1), site-directed nuclease-2 techniques (SDN-2) and oligonucleotide-directed mutagenesis (ODM). These differ from site-directed nucleases-3 (SDN-3), which was assessed by EFSA in 2012, because they modify a specific region of the genome without introducing new DNA.

European and UK legislation on deforestation is a ‘huge opportunity’ for Brazilian agriculture with the industry confident it can increase production and efficiency without damage to the Amazon.

But industry leaders, speaking at a round-table by Apex-Brasil, the Brazilian trade and investment promotion agency, said communicating its sustainability credentials would be key.

Celso Moretti, president of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), said Brazil had made a ‘fantastic transformation’ over the past 50 years driven by science and technology.

The sugar industry has submitted an application for emergency authorisation of Cruiser SB (thiamethoxam) as a neonicotinoid seed treatment, to be used to protect the English sugar beet crop in 2021.

This comes as sugar beet growers faced ‘unprecedented’ challenges in 2020 as the impact of virus yellows saw some yields fall by 70 per cent.

The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB)’s Farm Excellence network will launch its first wave of on-farm carbon footprinting this month.

Chosen to represent a range of regions, systems and sectors, a total of 40 strategic and monitor farms will be the first to be assessed to determine their carbon footprint.

The assessments will be carried out by SAC Consulting and ADAS between November 2020 and March 2021, with results leading to bespoke mitigation measures in detailed carbon action plans.

Defra’s former chief scientist Professor Ian Boyd has called on Government to spend as much on food research as it does on health research.

Prof Boyd said food was so important to humanity, and so interlinked with public health, that the budgets should be the same. At the moment, the UK’s food research spend stands at less than 10 per cent of the heath research budget.

According to Prof Boyd, the money should be spent on research on three transformative technologies – genetics, robotics and process engineering – in order to boost UK agriculture’s productivity.