Our Week in Agri-Tech

Vlogging from G's Group after a Growers' Forum meeting organised by the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority and chaired by Mayor Paul Bristow. What could Andy Burnham's plan for devolution innovation and #agritech in particular across the UK? And what were the pressing issues facing some of the big farming and agri-food businesses in the room? (Spoiler alert: 🚰 🚜 🔬...

Thank you Claire Donkin and team for having us at your brilliant Peat Free Pathway event at Fountain Plants Ltd. The learnings from the discussions have been shared by Kate Brunswick and Laura Bouvet with the Agri-TechE team – clearly the transition to peat-free is neither rapid nor straightforward but your event got the industry talking together. 🚜 From fixed fee to future rights, discounted acc...

Our Stakeholder Group is so important to us to help shape our thinking and our future activities. Thanks to Richardson Milling UK for hosting our latest meeting, which saw really helpful input from farming, academia, agri-tech entrepreneurship and commercial innovation. The latest in our “micro-learning” series about intellectual property in agri-tech rolled off the press, courtesy of Carsten Rein...

🪟 🫣 The Sustainable Farming Incentive window opened – and shut – on Tuesday….it felt a bit of a manic panic way to allocate funding to land-owners to deliver environmental land management, but let’s hope for some major impact on the ground. 🎠 The World Agri-Tech Summit was interspersed with an evening Reception we hosted with the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade. The Agri-...

This week: 👏 A big thanks to everyone who focused on finance with us - whether you were an investor, an early stage venture, or just came to listen and network. With fabulous keynotes which stretched our brains about the investable future of the food system, we discovered big opportunities for the new “biological intelligence” layer…. Plus 10 early stage ventures in agrifood, showcasing their sol...

👉 We’re growing the Agri-TechE team…..are you – or someone you know – our next new recruit? https://www.agri-tech-e.co.uk/opportunity/team-support-administrator/ 📣 Final call to “Focus on Finance” with us next week to learn more about different financing options to start and scale your #agritech company and hear from the latest batch of entrepreneurs. Plus SyndetAI will be helping all our start-...

More money, making the most of membership and maize…. Agri-TechE ’s weekly vlog is recorded alongside (an ever-dwindling) hay store. This week: 🤝 Meet the right people, increase your visibility, and grow your network and impact – we walk through how to max out your Agri-TechE membership on Tuesday 8th September at noon. Prospective members also very welcome….come and be part of the community! 💷...

This week we’re about birds, biologicals, the future of farm machinery and the importance of language when talking about nature and the environment.   Read on…. 🪶 🍂 The berry bounty currently bursting forth in UK hedgerows awaits the winter bird visitors – but will it hold long enough to feed them in this “false autumn?” And the trade-off between the Government’s Drought Support Package for...

In a week where the Government announced a Drought Support Package for farmers, we're calling anyone who wants to meet agritech start-ups….. Read on! ☔ With just 1mm of rain falling in some parts of the Fens this week, we dive into the details of the new Support Package. Is it a drop in the ocean of what’s really needed? 💷 Come and Focus on Finance with us on the 17th Sept, featuring start-up pi...

☀️ 🌔 🌠 🌊 🥵 🪱 Today’s vlog standing in front a compost pile ready for incorporation – helping build soil resilience for future extreme weather. Three different members deploying three different member benefits 📣 Raising the profile of their technology 🤝 Bring introduced to the right people for their business needs ❓ Specific tech “asks” from a fruit farmer….watch the vid to find out if you...

It’s all about the not-so-humble (and thirsty) spud, where we’ve been considering the science behind growing better potatoes and in a week where the UK’s first gene-edited crop gained regulatory approval. Plus money, the robotics revolution and a great opportunity for our Early Career Innovators. This week: 🥔 🍟 Lamb Weston processes 200,000 tonnes of potatoes a year, a great example of supply ch...

Going all ornamental in this week’s vlog – about a sector that is worth £1.6bn to the UK economy. This week’s round-up from Agri-TechE is from Bury Lane Farm Shop , one of the UK’s leading growers of house plants and flowers – with an awesome PYO experience. Just what we needed for our team away day and teeing us up for the second of our Strategy Days. A huge thank you to Will and your team for th...

➡️ All change in the UK Government - including the Department now responsible (again) for funding science, innovation and technology. 👀 Check out our video that landed this week where I talk to Sarah Evered about farmer readiness for dynamic alignment with the EU within Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs . 💭 Big thoughts with Niall Mottram of Cambridge Consultants about a potenti...

Bag yourself a smart grad trainee, discover how it feels to be in charge of a robot, the UK's 5 year commitment to #agritech innovation, and welcome to one of our new members – this week’s round-up from Agri-TechE . 🎓 We announce a leap forward in the way we support agritech learning and development through a new partnership with MDS Ltd . Apply to host a trainee and also be part of tech-ing up t...

In this week’s round-up we announce our #REAP2026 keynote speaker and give you a heads-up about the next in our “Agri-Tech Meets…” event series. And did you bump into any of the Agri-TechE team at Fruit Focus? This week: 📣 We proudly announce Anjali Goswami FRS , Defra’s Chief Scientific Advisor as our REAP 2026 keynote speaker and the wider agenda, plus some opportunities to leverage the REAP co...

This week's round-up from the Groundswell Agriculture festival. I share my reflections, pick out one of my fave talks of the show and welcome a new member in this week's vlog from Agri-TechE. ⛺ 😎 A more considered set of conversations at Groundswell this year - and Happy 10th Birthday to the Festival. Even the Secretary of State Emma Reynolds loved it! 🫶 Inspired by the session by Pasture for L...

Lots of Defra news to share, plus we talk about trade-offs around global food security, and consider if high-input agriculture still make sense. Plus we welcome some of our latest new members.   This week in the Agri-TechE round-up:   📣 Defra’s been busy this week. The Farming Roadmap has landed, and we discover what the Government thinks about the 2025 Farming Profitability Review as i...

Rounding up the Agri-TechE week on farm, courtesy of Home Farm Nacton – the 43rd Demonstrator Farm for LEAF (Linking Environment And Farming) .   Also this week: -         Applications open for early stage #agritech ventures to present at our Focus on Finance event (Sept 17th – all welcome). -         Al...

Hazel Alpaca (newly-shorn) and I are here to tell you about Cereals, the Festival of Fresh, the next in our “Agri-Tech Meets…” series, plus the Big Announcement that UK farmers have been awaiting. This week from Agri-TechE: 🕳️ My learnings from the Niab soil hole at Cereals Event (and thank you David Clarke for a great explanation about "plate-y" limestone and following the wormholes). 💭 A mantra...

Forecasting the weather, crop performance and pest and disease outbreaks has been peppered with rhyming slogans and old wives’ tales (DM me to discover the one about the right time to drill sugar beet - too rude for the vlog!). This week the Agri-TechE round-up is from a sugar beet field, talking about the top tech being used by British Beet Research Organisation (BBRO) to bring some science to th...

We’ve all wilted and dried out in the UK heatwave this week… imagine the impact on those growing high value, short-season crops such as #peonies? How much of their marketable crop was a peony grower left with this week? Answer in the video….. 👏 Big thanks to the team at Niab for a great event, where we talked precision breeding, and learning how crop #genetics might influence the microbial commun...

Opening this week’s round-up with apologies to Gerry Rafferty (and to anyone too young to appreciate the appalling pastiche of a 1970s pop sone). This week: ❓ Are we a "Well-Adapted UK" when it comes to climate risk? The 4th independent review landed this week with some stern recommendations as to how Government should support farmers as their farming models evolve. #citrus and #chickpea, anyone?...

The Agri-TechE round-up features our discussions on crop health solutions, a new UK offering for on-farm R&D and we’ve entered the world of podcasts. And you’ll learn what the Medici Effect is and why it’s important for #agritech . 🚜 Our first on-farm “Demo-Day” – showcasing technology solutions for soils and water management at Elveden Farms Ltd 📣 We launched Season 2 of our #AgriChat podca...

Friday round up from Agri-TechE next to the lions in Trafalgar Square – not quite #agritech This week we’ve been out an about a lot…. -           You can take the woman out of the lab, (and wait X0 years!) but you can’t take the lab out of the woman! Grace O Gorman and I did a double act on all things #agritech at the London Lab Live event at...

We’re buzzzzzing after a great week where the Agri-TechE round up is from among the apple blossom, as we’re thinking #pollination. A line-up of tech companies walked us through not just pollination monitoring  @agrisound5776  but also bird ID – and, hot news – moth ID WilderSensing, soil organic carbon monitoring  @DownforceTechnologies  and a new high-tech approach to mapping...