UK agri-tech risks falling short of its global ambitions unless it can bridge a persistent gap between innovation and commercialisation, industry leaders have warned MPs.
During an evidence session of the UK Parliament’s Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, founders and executives from leading agri-tech businesses highlighted a structural weakness in the UK ecosystem: while the country excels at early-stage research, it struggles to translate that into scalable businesses.
“The strength and challenge… is that we have world-leading research organisations, but we are yet to have world-leading start-up organisations,” said Charles Veys, CEO of crop imaging start-up Fotenix. “Fixing that gap will be crucial to enabling us to be a global player on the agtech stage.”
That diagnosis was widely echoed by the panel, which included representatives from LettUs Grow, SugaROx and OptiGene.
Scaling gap driven by risk, margins and structure
Speakers pointed to a combination of structural and market constraints holding back scale.
Ben Crowther, CTO of LettUs Grow, described the challenge as “crossing the chasm” between R&D and commercial adoption, particularly acute in agriculture, where margins are low and risk appetite is limited.
“Inherently, greater support in that area is what would help UK agtech businesses succeed,” he said.
Dr Cara Griffiths, co-founder of SugaROx, added that scaling challenges are compounded by regulatory complexity, while Ross Haffenden of OptiGene pointed to weak “routes to market” as a key bottleneck.
“I’d say the biggest challenge is the commercial models that enable farmers and growers to adopt this technology,” he said.
Funding exists, fragmentation is the bigger problem
The committee heard that the UK government invests hundreds of millions annually across multiple innovation funding streams. But the issue is not just the level of funding, but how it is structured.
George Freeman MP estimated public agri-tech r&d funding is spread across “about half a billion pounds a year in 32 different pots,” raising concerns about coherence.
Panellists agreed that the UK offers relatively strong early-stage support – particularly via schemes such as Innovate UK and the Farming Innovation Programme – but warned the system is overly fragmented and opaque.
An MP warned that there is a “pyramid of innovation” that is “just dying” because start-ups cannot access even modest funding – sometimes as little as £25,000 – to get off the ground.
Private capital “too conservative” for agtech realities
If public funding is fragmented, private capital is seen as insufficient and poorly aligned with the realities of agricultural innovation.
“Private funding [in the UK is] extremely conservative,” said Crowther. “You go to the US, you’d generally add a zero to a company valuation.”
Haffenden called on a broader range of corporates – beyond agribusiness giants such as Syngenta, Bayer and BASF – to invest more in the sector.
He said: “We need greater involvement from the higher end of the supply chain – food producers and processors. The Kraft Foods, Nestlés and Mars of this world should be investing, and some already are, in technologies that support farming and the wider supply chain.”
Griffiths pointed to a critical mismatch between venture capital expectations and agtech timelines.
“In agri-tech, it’s very hard to get an exit in 10 years… We need patient investment,” she said. “The lack of patient capital in the UK is probably the biggest bottleneck.”
As a result, many UK start-ups are either raising capital overseas, or being acquired by US firms, raising concerns about a growing “IP drain”.
A “graveyard” of start-ups and missed scale opportunities
The consequences are already visible.
“There is a graveyard of some great ag tech companies over the last four or five years,” said Veys, noting that only a minority of start-ups from earlier cohorts have survived or remained in the UK.
This “missing middle” – between early-stage innovation and large-scale commercial players – continues to undermine the UK’s ability to build globally competitive agri-tech champions.
Despite strong tax incentives and research funding, the businesses warned that the system is effectively feeding talent and intellectual property into overseas markets rather than building domestic scale.
Looking to the Netherlands: a blueprint for coordination
Against this backdrop, MPs signalled growing interest in the Netherlands – the world’s second-largest exporter of agricultural products by value, after the United States – as a potential model for reform.
The Science, Innovation and Technology Committee is now planning a visit to the country to examine how its agri-tech ecosystem has successfully scaled innovation.
Central to this is the Dutch “triple helix” model, which tightly integrates government, academia and industry to accelerate commercialisation.
The Dutch model is worth replicating, said Crowther, pointing to Wageningen University & Research as a global “gold standard” that legitimises research.
Bridging the gap: from trials to real-world adoption
A key difference highlighted by the panel is the availability of commercial-scale testbeds in the Netherlands.
Crowther described efforts by LettUs Grow to build a greenhouse facility that operates as a commercial business but allows start-ups to trial technologies under real-world conditions – a capability largely missing in the UK.
“We need environments where you can test technologies against real operating metrics,” he said.
Similarly, facilities like the World Horti Center provide shared platforms for demonstrating and scaling innovations, an approach that could inform UK policy.
Regulation and emerging technologies add further pressure
Regulation was also identified as a constraint, particularly for emerging categories such as biostimulants.
Griffiths argued that the UK has an opportunity to lead globally by developing clear frameworks and testbeds in these areas but warned that the current system lags behind.
“There’s huge demand from farmers, but the regulatory environment isn’t enabling that innovation at scale,” she said.
Ambitions high – but delivery remains uncertain
The UK government has set an ambitious target to grow the agri-tech sector to £20bn by 2035. But industry voices questioned whether current structures are aligned with that goal.
“I don’t think there is enough to align agri-tech with other frontier industries like AI or aerospace,” said Haffenden.
Griffiths added that while the building blocks are in place, including catapults, research centres and funding schemes, the system lacks cohesion and visibility.
“It just feels very fragmented, and I think a lot of the times in agri-tech we sort of don’t feel like we have a strategic relevance,” she said.
A system at a crossroads
The committee’s planned visit to the Netherlands underscores a growing recognition that the UK’s agri-tech challenge is not one of innovation, but of execution.
With strong science, early-stage support and global ambition already in place, the next phase will hinge on whether policymakers can unlock patient capital, simplify funding pathways strengthen industry-academia links and create clearer routes to market.
Without that shift, the risk, according to industry, is clear: the UK will continue to invent, but not scale.
