There was no shortage of ideas at this year’s World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit in London. But there was little sign of shiny-new-object syndrome.
Instead, conversations repeatedly returned to the fundamentals. Farmers are grappling with climate volatility, water scarcity, high input costs and mounting disease and pest resistance. They need technologies that work reliably, fit existing farming systems and, crucially, make economic sense.
The technology is increasingly there. The bigger question is whether the regulation, investment and business models are.
Gene editing takes centre stage
Gene editing was one of the summit’s biggest talking points, helped by an increasingly favourable regulatory environment on both sides of the Channel.
The UK (at least in England) has gone furthest, creating a distinct regime for precision-bred organisms containing genetic changes that could have occurred through conventional breeding.
The EU is heading in a similar direction through its rules for New Genomic Techniques, albeit with a more prescriptive framework.
But England’s early-mover advantage has created a potentially thorny question as the UK and EU negotiate a new sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) agreement.
The proposed deal would see Great Britain dynamically align with large areas of EU agrifood regulation in exchange for substantially reduced trade friction. Precisely where that leaves England’s approach to genetic technologies remains a crucial detail still to be negotiated.
Addressing the summit, the UK’s new farming secretary Steven Morgan (the third in two years, with the frequent turnover of farming ministers amid the UK’s political instability being another story) pledged to protect the UK’s regulatory freedoms around agricultural biotechnology.
That leaves a big question hanging over one of the UK’s hottest agricultural investment opportunities: can it secure frictionless agri-food trade with Europe without surrendering the regulatory flexibility it believes can give its gene-editing sector a competitive advantage?
Biologicals’ regulatory bottleneck
Gene editing is also increasingly crossing paths with other growth areas, from AI and biologicals to regenerative agriculture and agri-finance.
But enthusiasm for biologicals came with a familiar complaint: Europe needs a regulatory framework better suited to them.
“If Europe can move towards a science-based, risk-based regulatory system that allows biologicals, natural products and other solutions derived from nature to follow a more streamlined process, I think we will see that technology flowing and growing at a faster pace,” Corteva’s Tom Greene told the summit.
The opportunity is there. The argument is that regulation needs to catch up.
Big Ag opens the door to outside innovation
Another encouraging message for start-ups was that major agribusinesses appear increasingly willing to look beyond their own R&D operations for answers.
“The same problems exist,” as one industry player put it. What is changing is the willingness to find the best technology wherever it originates.
Examples abound. Corteva’s forthcoming Vylor business has partnered with Belgian biotech Rainbow Crops to work on climate-resilient corn using AI and multiplex gene editing. Bayer is backing Robigo, which is developing crop protection technologies using engineered microbes, RNA interference and CRISPR. Syngenta, meanwhile, aside from announcing recent major breakthroughs through its own in-house R&D has struck deals with companies including Amoéba and Groundwork BioAg.
For start-ups battling a prolonged squeeze in venture funding, the message was encouraging: corporates still need innovation.
But they don’t necessarily need the newest innovation.
One corporate investor told AgNavigator that some of the most interesting businesses on his radar were effectively “old start-ups”, with technologies that had been around for several years but had undergone management changes that made them more commercially attractive.
Perseverance, product-market fit and execution may matter more than novelty.
Forget the ‘best’ technology. Make it work for farmers
That fed into another theme: technically superior products don’t automatically win.
A solution must fit the farmer’s operation, price point and appetite for risk. Technologies promising maximum performance on paper can lose to supposedly inferior alternatives that are easier to buy, integrate and use.
That puts distributors and agronomic advisers, repeatedly highlighted at the summit as agtech’s unsung heroes, in an increasingly strategic position.
Too much investment has arguably gone into product-level R&D and too little into integration, local validation and distribution. The result is innovation that creates value in trials but struggles to deliver it on the farm.
Potential winners, therefore, may be the businesses that simplify complexity and demonstrate consistent performance under messy, real-world conditions, rather than those making the biggest headline claims.
Farmers cannot carry the transition alone
There is an even bigger obstacle: who pays?
Across discussions covering farm economics, carbon markets, insurance and climate resilience, speakers repeatedly returned to the same imbalance. Farmers are expected to make upfront investments in resilience while operating on exceptionally thin margins, even when much of the resulting value ultimately accrues elsewhere in the supply chain.
“When the transition is not supported, all the costs, all the burden, directly goes on the shoulders of the farmers,” said Bengü Özge Şerifoğlu.
Former UK environment secretary George Eustice went further, arguing that current margins cannot support the investment agriculture will require.
“I personally think that we’re going to have to recognise that there’s a need for a structural increase in food prices over the next twenty or thirty years,” he said. “The world has enjoyed cheap food for too long.”
The summit did not settle who ultimately needs to pick up the bill.
But there appeared to be growing acceptance that a voluntary, farmer-funded transition alone won’t scale. Expect more attention on blended public-private finance, supply-chain insetting, insurance and risk-sharing between banks, insurers, agribusinesses and farmers.
Agtech’s next challenge is deployment
The overriding challenge is no longer simply inventing another clever technology.
AI, gene editing, biologicals and precision agriculture are expanding the technical possibilities. Large agribusinesses appear increasingly willing to source innovation externally. Start-ups continue to produce potentially valuable solutions.
But farmers facing increasingly volatile weather and relentless pressure on margins cannot shoulder the cost and risk of adopting them alone.
Agtech has plenty of technology. Its next innovation challenge is building the regulatory, financial and commercial machinery needed to get it onto the farm.
