On Resilience

In 2022, the UK experienced its fifth driest summer since 1836. Combined with record-breaking temperatures, this led to severe drought conditions across the country with key agricultural regions across the East and South of England as some of the worst affected. The drought resulted in widespread reductions in crop yields and harvested areas, as dwindling water supplies in soils, rivers, and reservoirs left farmers struggling to meet crop water demands.

While 2022 was an extreme drought year by historical standards, such events are likely to become the norm in the years to come. Projections by the UK’s Met Office and Centre for Ecology and Hydrology suggest average summer rainfall and river flows in the UK could decline by approximately 25% and 45% respectively by 2050, with extreme drought events also expected to become more frequent and severe. Simultaneously, demands for water will rise in every sector of society, as higher temperatures increase water requirements of crops and population growth drives up water demand from domestic users. Pressures on water will be greatest in the South and East of England, where the UK grows much of its high value horticulture and water intensive crops (such as potatoes), and where agriculture is already struggling to cope with risks posed by water scarcity.

We need significant changes to the way we manage and share water in the UK to reflect growing water risks faced by our agricultural sector. We must draw on lessons from other countries, such as the United States, Australia, and in southern Europe, that have faced water scarcity pressures for several decades.

Reform abstraction management policy

Rules around who is allowed to extract water from rivers and aquifers in the UK were originally devised and set up in the 1960s when water scarcity was far from the national policy agenda. However, failures in policy and management to evolve over time mean that many catchments are now classified as over-abstracted (more water is used than is available or sustainable) or over-licensed (the legal right exists to use more water than available or sustainable). This means agriculture and other water-dependent sectors have little flexibility to respond to growing water risks posed by climate change and population expansion.

Reforms to the abstraction licensing regime in England and Wales were originally proposed by the Department for Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) nearly ten years ago. The proposals included changes to the link abstraction limits that are directly to available supplies of water in a given year; the removal of exemptions on the need for abstraction licenses for some users; and greater flexibility to promote sharing or trading of water. Yet, to date, almost none of these have been implemented in either policy or practice. 

Our international research in places such as North America has shown that flexible abstraction rules and arrangements for sharing water, including trading systems, can significantly enhance farmers’ ability to manage drought risks and adapt to changing climate conditions. Such measures also ensure farmers have the confidence to invest in other productivity-enhancing practices, safe in the knowledge that their crops and income are protected against drought.

For the agricultural sector, delays to abstraction licensing reform continue to represent a significant missed opportunity for supporting climate adaptation. Implementing these reforms should be an urgent priority for government. One opportunity is through moves by Defra to modernise regulation of water use as part of the government’s 25 Year Environment Plan which, if successful, would go some way to enhancing resilience to drought and address the aim to “make the most out of every drop” of water.

Strengthen drought safety nets for farms

Reforming abstraction licensing alone isn’t sufficient to eliminate water risks, especially as droughts get more extreme and demands for water grow. To strengthen the resilience of agriculture, additional support measures will also be required that reduce both the likelihood of water shortfalls and mitigate impacts on farmers, rural economies, and food supply chains when drought does occur.

One key priority should be greater investment in infrastructure for water storage, both in the form of on-farm and larger-scale multi-use reservoirs, and the use of nature-based solutions, such as restoring natural wetlands. While summer rainfall and river flows are projected to decline in coming decades, water availability in winter is expected to follow the opposite trend. Enhancing capacity to store excess water in winter could provide a buffer against summer droughts and shortfalls, while offering protection against flood risks.

Opportunities also exist to tackle growing water risks through improvements in water use efficiency on farms, homes and businesses, which can lower water demands and abstractions. However, regulators must remember that efficiency measures do not create ‘new water’. Evidence from other countries such as the United States, Spain, and Australia suggests that irrigation efficiency improvements, if implemented in isolation, may lead to minimal improvements in water availability and in some cases can even exacerbate water pressures. Hence, it is critical to ensure that efficiency measures are accompanied by robust and sustainable limits on abstraction that reflect available water resources.

Unlike many other countries, the UK currently has few financial mechanisms to support farmers to manage production risks caused by drought and other weather extremes. Insurance schemes that deliver pay-outs to farmers in the event of crop failure could provide a financial safety net for farmers, and can be designed in ways that strengthen rather than weaken environmental sustainability. However, government support is needed to stimulate growth of insurance products and services.

‘You can’t manage what you don’t measure’

An essential prerequisite for implementing these innovations in abstraction and drought risk management is data. Changes to water allocation policies to enable trading of licenses in drought years require data on where and how much water is used by farmers and other license holders to ensure abstraction limits aren’t exceeded. Similarly, design of fair, reliable insurance products requires data on farmers’ historical crop yields and the ability to monitor where losses occur to determine when to make pay-outs and to who.

 Here, the UK faces many significant challenges. For most water licenses (particularly agricultural), data is rarely collected on actual rates of water use, and the data that is collected is often unreliable. A lack of objective data on cropping practices and yields can be a barrier to the development of more novel risk-management solutions, such as insurance and sustainability-linked financial incentives. In particular, lack of data and monitoring on agricultural land management practices represents a key constraint to implementation of the government’s plans to replace direct payments from the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) with sustainability-linked support to farmers through a new Environmental Land Management Schemes (ELMS) program.

 Strengthening data on agricultural land and water management requires a multi-pronged approach. A reversal to cutbacks in environmental enforcement capabilities at Environment Agency level, combined with increased investment in monitoring infrastructure including water metering, are essential to ensure abstraction policies are enforced - not just words written on paper. At the same time, capacity must be built to exploit new technological solutions enabling innovation in monitoring and management of water use. Our group is leading pioneering research on the use of satellite data to monitor agricultural water use and productivity. These approaches not only help plug gaps in traditional in-situ monitoring networks, but also provide data that can be used to identify and reward improvements in farmers’ practices, in ways that strengthen water stewardship.

Policy recommendations

• The agricultural sector needs a greater voice in debates around the allocation of scarce water resources, recognising the essential role of adequate and reliable supplies for the resilience of UK’s farms, rural economies and food supply chains.
• Reforms to abstraction management rules and investments in new water infrastructure (originally proposed almost a decade ago), if implemented in practice, could provide farmers with greater flexibility to adapt to increasingly frequent and severe droughts.
• Changes to abstraction management and farm support schemes must be accompanied by robust improvements in infrastructure and support for the data collection and monitoring of agricultural water use and productivity, which to date have been chronically underfunded and poorly prioritised.

Timothy Foster is a Senior Lecturer in Water-Food Security in the Department of Fluids and Environment at The University of Manchester.

The pathway to net zero will put the mining and metals sector to the test. Many key ‘clean’ technologies – including batteries, fuel cells, electrolysers, and solar photovoltaics – rely on ‘critical’ metals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, manganese, and the ‘rare earth’ elements. The ‘criticality’ of these metals stems from their economic importance, the lack of alternative materials, and the risk of their supply chains being disrupted. As they become central to decarbonisation, the future looks more ‘metal intensive’ than ever, with various challenges arising for policymakers. Given the importance of such critical metals, the UK government released the Critical Minerals Strategy (CMS) earlier this year. The strategy sets out the plan for improving the resilience of the critical metal supply chain, underpinned by three main goals:

•  Accelerate the growth of the UK’s domestic capabilities;
• Collaborate with international partners;
• Enhance international markets to make them more responsive, transparent, and responsible.

We unpack three challenges to these goals, some of which are acknowledged in the strategy, and some are not: geopolitical frictions, scarcity, and value conflicts.

The geopolitics of metals

The increasing demand for certain metals means that some countries find their natural resources in increasingly high demand compared to others. The scramble for new critical metal supplies, and the dispersion of critical metal resources in particular geographies, raise geopolitical conflicts. Such conflicts pose risks to international collaboration to improve supply chain resiliency. For instance, the control over critical metal supply – and the processing and manufacturing of clean technology – is becoming a significant element in the strategic and economic competition between the United States and China.

Since the outbreak of the US-China trade war, US companies are being urged by their government to pursue a more diversified supply chain, with less reliance on resources from China. However, the alternatives are similarly complex. Notably, several critical metals like tantalum fall into the category of ‘conflict metals’, as they originate in areas like the Democratic Republic of Congo, where trading of these resources has been used to finance armed conflict.

Scarcity of metals

As the demand for critical metals is on the rise, their scarcity could be driven by geopolitics or geology. Scarcity arising from geopolitics could potentially be resolved by exploring strategies like diversification of supply chains, and other strategies like ‘nearshoring’, ‘friend-shoring’, or ‘ally-shoring’ - moving production and jobs to perceived friendly nations.

Notwithstanding the complexity and difficulty involved in these strategies, the scarcity of metals arising from geology is even more difficult to solve. For instance, the International Energy Agency argues that the world could face lithium shortages in 2025. While the current shortages are often outcomes of market mechanisms and geopolitics, critical materials are a finite resource base, like any other naturally occurring resource, and this must be considered when designing a future state which depends heavily on them.

Policymakers should consider that net zero transition is not as simple as replacing one limited resource with another. Rather, it should, and must, involve a system-wide transformative change, rather than incremental changes to current technologies. For instance, owning an electric car can cause as many problems as a petrol one in the long run. To make mobility more sustainable, we need to explore transformative modes of production and consumption, such as shifting to public or shared transport powered by electric vehicles.

Value conflicts

As climate targets become more ambitious, more minerals and metals will be needed for a low-carbon future. This increasing demand will be met by exploration and extraction from new metal sources, but it is important to consider that the extraction of metals is often a very energy-intensive process. The traditional extraction process has the potential to reduce the benefits of low-carbon technologies in terms of reducing carbon emissions. Mining practices also have various harmful environmental impacts such as loss of biodiversity, erosion, and groundwater contamination.

Moreover, the extraction of metals could take place in a location that is far from the refining and manufacturing hubs, creating further emissions from transport which could reduce the potential environmental benefits of clean technologies. A prescient example of this can be found in the UK, where critical metals are beginning to be extracted in Cornwall, but processed in East Yorkshire. While this is a much shorter supply chain than procuring resources from China and brings welcome investment to economically deprived regions, policymakers should accelerate the ‘cluster’ approach outlined in the CMS (similar to the hydrogen and carbon capture plans) to further shorten the physical distances involved.

How can these barriers be overcome?

Firstly, diversification of the supply chain would improve resilience, and minimise risks arising due to the geopolitics of metals and ‘black swan’ events (for example, the invasion of Ukraine, which reinforced concerns over dependence on Russian resources).

Secondly, pursuing net zero targets along with principles of a circular economy (CE) could be a potential solution. A CE entails keeping materials in circulation, thereby reducing waste, and improving material efficiency. Circularity strategies have the potential to diversify and stabilise the supply chains of critical metals. Moreover, it also has the potential to reduce dependence on energy-intensive primary extraction. In the case of lithium, ‘urban mining’ from spent lithium-ion batteries (LiBs) could potentially reduce the need for primary extraction from the earth. However, the implementation of such solutions is far from straightforward, given the range of actors involved and the complexity of the problem.

To this end, we put forward two key areas that we are exploring at the National Circular Economy Centre (NICER) for ‘technology metals’ (Met4Tech); a consortium with companies, researchers, and policy actors, to maximise opportunities around the provision of technology-critical metals within the UK.

Roadmap to manage the metal-intensive future

The implementation of solutions is only possible through the collaboration and commitment of system actors to a circular economy of technology metals. The process of building a roadmap is often argued to be more important than the roadmap itself because it provides an opportunity to express commitment and collaboration among system actors. It enables clear articulation of the current state, goals, and action items to reach the vision of policymakers. The roadmap is due in 2024 and has been mentioned in the CMS as an initiative that enables the building of research and development expertise within the UK.

The creation of the roadmap will involve consultation with policy actors. The proposal for the Met4Tech has the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and its successor bodies, and the devolved governments as key policy contacts who will be consulted in the road-mapping process. Other policy partners engaged in the Met4Tech roadmap are the Cabinet Office, Cornwall Council, the Department for International Trade, the Environment Agency, the Ministry of Defence, and the Coal Authority.

Incorporating Responsible Innovation in the metal-intensive future

The challenges we have outlined are complex, lack clear solutions, and are often unintended consequences that arise from potential solutions themselves. LiBs were proposed as a replacement for fossil fuels during the energy crisis in the 1970s, but 50 years later, we are tackling waste from spent batteries; the energy intensity of lithium extraction; and the potential shortages in lithium supply, which threaten the electric vehicle revolution. Responsible innovation will aim to transform innovation practices to become more anticipatory, reflexive, inclusive, and responsive. In our work at Met4Tech, we aim to bring in principles of Responsible Innovation while designing a CE of technology metals, thereby avoiding (as much as possible) any unintended consequences in the short- and long-term. Policymakers also need to take into consideration such unintended consequences as the new CMS starts to take shape in the real world.

The Critical Minerals Strategy is a start, but the UK can, and must, go further.

Sampriti Mahanty is a Research Associate at the Sustainable Consumption Institute, The University of Manchester.

Frank Boons is Professor of Innovation and Sustainability at the Sustainable Consumption Institute, The University of Manchester.

Antimicrobials are lifesaving drugs. Since their introduction – alongside vaccines, improved public health, and better sanitation – deaths from infectious diseases have declined dramatically. Globally, however, increasing levels of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) mean that these crucial drugs are no longer effective for treating many bacterial, viral, fungal, and protozoal infections (such as malaria). Keeping antimicrobial drugs working has been highlighted as a global priority by the United Nations (UN) and World Health Organisation (WHO), and as an essential prerequisite for delivering the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. In 2019, drug resistant microbial infections claimed more than 1.3 million lives, and during the next 25 years, it is expected that more people will die from drug resistant infections than from cancer. The University of Manchester’s AMR Network is working to better understand and discover new solutions to the crisis of antimicrobial resistance, to help safeguard our health and wealth in Greater Manchester, the UK, and globally.

The origins of resistance

Firstly, effectively using existing antimicrobial drugs requires us to better understand the molecular mechanisms of resistance, and the evolutionary processes leading to the emergence of AMR. The Manchester Fungal Infection Group has discovered new resistance mechanisms against clinical antifungals and has been central in showing how their use in the clinic and in crop protection creates an environment for resistance development. Meanwhile, bacteriologists have shown that the evolution of resistance to commonly used antimicrobials varies in predictable ways, according to conditions at the site of infection. This suggests new ways in which resistance emergence could be predicted – or even limited.

New antimicrobials and alternatives to traditional chemotherapeutic agents are urgently needed to treat infections that are resistant to all current therapies. Researchers from the University have been working to discover new ways to treat infections, such as tuberculosis, that block key infection processes and lessen the damage caused. Alternatives to antibiotics, such as phage therapy – which uses viruses that target bacteria to treat bacterial infections – are increasingly used as a last resort treatment. We are working to understand how resistance evolves against phages to guide the rationale design of phage therapies that best prevent resistance emerging.

It is critical to understand how and where drug resistance emerges. Without this knowledge, we cannot implement effective surveillance or antimicrobial stewardship (AMS). Of particular concern is the steady rise in antifungal resistance driven by the use of antifungals in crop protection. Alongside the University NHS Foundation Trust, we are working to understand the evolutionary mechanisms driving resistance in pathogenic fungi, so strategies can be developed to reduce resistance levels in patients and the wider environment. We are currently predicting that resistance will evolve to next-generation antifungals in agricultural settings before they are even put into clinical use.

In the clinic

AMS aims to optimise the use of antimicrobial drugs to ensure their effectiveness in the long run. Across the NHS, dentists are the second highest prescribers of antibiotics after GPs, and ahead of hospitals in the number of antibiotic items and net prescription costs in 2021-2022. Furthermore, dentistry was the only part of the NHS to increase antibiotic prescribing in 2020, due to COVID-19 restrictions on the provision of dentistry. Research led by The University of Manchester, with national and international colleagues, is developing and testing interventions for use by the UK Health Security Agency, NHS, and in other countries around the world to reduce unnecessary and inappropriate antibiotic prescribing by dentists.

Our researchers are also leading the development of international policy on antimicrobial stewardship, through the FDI World Dental Federation and through its influence with the WHO. Pioneering work on antifungal stewardship in intensive care units, by the University and the NHS Foundation Trust, has resulted in significant reduction (50%) in both antifungal consumption and mortality to bloodstream infection by Candida yeast (a common fungal infection).

An antimicrobial stewardship project aimed at the education of secondary care teams is led by the Division of Medical Education. AMS TEACH is an NIHR Policy Research Programme funded collaboration between The University of Manchester, UCL, the University of Newcastle, and Public Health England. The project aims to understand how, and to what extent, education and training interventions for health professionals about AMS use behavioural science and, crucially, to develop policy recommendations to improve the impact of education and training on stewardship behaviours.

What can – and should – be done?

AMR has been recognised by the UK government as “one of the most pressing global health challenges” faced this century. The UK’s 20-year AMR vision highlights that low-and-middle-income countries will be worst affected, but more affluent nations will also see higher mortality and longer lasting infections.

COVID-19 sharply demonstrated that diseases are not limited to a single nation, and tackling antimicrobial resistance requires global cooperation. As a start, international bodies like the UN, WHO, and the EU should provide detailed guidance on the use of antimicrobials in agriculture. This should include risk assessments on the likelihood of cross-resistance evolving because of the dual use of the same types of antimicrobials across agriculture and the clinic, to limit the risk posed by AMR evolving in the environment.

Key to tackling AMR is understanding the scale of the risk. International programmes are in place to monitor the emergence of resistance, but more can be done on predicting evolution, and the impacts of commercial use of antimicrobials on resistance in the clinic. This is particularly true for novel antimicrobials, where new drugs may be deployed in agriculture before they are approved for clinical use.

Regulators should ensure that before a new antimicrobial is permitted for commercial use, independent assessment has been made of the potential impact on clinical use. In the UK, this will require cooperation between the Environment Agency, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), and the UK Health Security Agency; establishment of a cross-agency working group would help to facilitate this. The PATH-SAFE programme may provide a useful template for this, in bringing together public and private sectors.

At a departmental level, UK policymakers should make the most of Britain’s regulatory divergence from the EU to drive research into phage therapies. The Department of Science, Innovation and Technology should make phage therapies a priority research area, and coordinate expertise and regulatory development across the UK, in partnership with the Department for Health and Social Care, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, and the MHRA. In an inquiry response via the Microbiology Society, we recommend that one pathway to doing so is to increase the number of phage-specific funding opportunities, alongside investigating the use of phages in agriculture and animal medicine, where there are few regulatory hurdles for research.

Lastly, widespread study of the behavioural and social science aspects of antimicrobial use, and the development of evidence-based behavioural interventions to influence this, is needed. Our research highlights the need for a widely available evidence-based resource, to guide the reporting for AMR and AMS behaviour change interventions. A simple, standardised reporting framework will help the delivery of robust training to health professionals on how to responsibly manage antimicrobial use.

Lessons and opportunities from COVID-19

Our research has found that the 25% increase in antibiotic prescribing by dentists during the COVID-19 pandemic was driven by system-level influences, which left dentists feeling frustrated that they were unable to provide safe and effective care in line with clinical guidance. Remote management of urgent dental patients (tele-dentistry) was found to underpin the problem. The study found that this approach continued to be used by dental services commissioners in some parts of the country to manage the problem of poor access to NHS dentistry, and more recently, it has been included within the NHS England commissioning strategy for urgent dental care.

Targets for optimising antibiotic prescribing into the future should be at the system (commissioner) level and should focus on improving access to – and the delivery of – safe and effective care for people with acute dental problems, in accordance with the long-standing national guidelines and the WHO’s more recent antibiotics book. Focusing antimicrobial stewardship activities on reducing antibiotic prescribing alone may result in unsafe and ineffective care as, left untreated, dental infections can quickly become life-threatening.

Where next?

The future UK AMR strategy should draw on research from The University of Manchester and others, by identifying new ways to help conserve the effectiveness of antimicrobials for future generations. For their part, research bodies should aim to shape targets within, and support delivery of, the UK’s national AMR action plan and the WHO's Global Action Plan on AMR, including through our global health research and education activities in LMICs.

Antimicrobial resistance is an existential threat, and one that is intimately entwined with the risks posed by climate change and overconsumption. For AMR, as with the climate crisis and resource scarcity, the solution lies in a mix of new innovations, and smarter guarding of current assets.

Michael Bottery is a Sir Henry Wellcome Fellow at the School of Biological Sciences, The University of Manchester.

Michael Brockhurst is Chair in Evolutionary Biology at the School of Biological Sciences, The University of Manchester.

Lucie Byrne-Davis is Professor of Health Psychology at the School of Medical Sciences, The University of Manchester.

Michael Bromley is Professor of Medical Mycology at the School of Biological Sciences, The University of Manchester.

Wendy Thompson is NIHR Clinical Lecturer in Primary Dental Care at the School of Medical Sciences, The University of Manchester.

There is a clear and present threat to global food supplies from the perfect storm that is hitting international agriculture. Our worldwide population is expected to increase from 8 billion to over 10 billion by 2100. At the same time as global demand for food increases, an increasingly wealthy middle class - particularly in emerging economies - are driving global changes in dietary choices from vegetarian diets to the comparative luxury of more resource-intensive meat-based ones. Poultry and cattle-based diets are just 40% and 3% as efficient respectively on land usage as the equivalent vegetarian diet. But there are also political pressures, including cross-border migration, population shifts from rural to urban areas, the increase in average age in farming communities, and severe weather events due to climate change, all putting global food production at risk.

The increased tolerance of pests, pathogens and weeds to crop protection products, alongside the lack of new active ingredients coming from the agri-industry pipeline, pose a threat to global food supplies. As a result, there are strong political drivers to minimise chemical usage and environmental impact, matched to policy decision making. For example, since January 2014, the EU’s 'Sustainable Use of Pesticides' directive has required non-chemical pest control methods to be prioritised wherever possible. All EU law pertaining to the regulation of plant protection products has been retained in UK law following Brexit.

Electronic systems with embedded ‘smart technologies’, such as microprocessors and Graphic Processing Units (GPUs), offer an opportunity to revolutionise agriculture. These technologies can rapidly reduce costs and dramatically increase efficiency.

Potential impact of AI on global agriculture

For arable agriculture, the adoption of these smart technologies is starting to gather speed in sectors where labour costs dominate, particularly for crops which traditionally need individuals tending to them, such as horticulture or soft fruit production. These sectors are early adopters of smart systems, in many cases, because of the sheer lack of labour needed for harvest. Already established machinery is being retrofitted to fulfil these duties, but new technologies are emerging.

For agriculture, AI is still in its infancy. The full scope of its impact and potential is yet to be determined. AI is often reported as automation, robotics, and big data, so the specific contribution of smart technology is, as of yet, unclear. Research indicates that potential profits for AI in agriculture are estimated to be as high as $120 billion per annum, broadly similar to the impact in media and entertainment. Deployment of AI in the agricultural sector faces unique challenges due to diverse factors, such as the climate, alongside economic and biological influences. However, AI could better account for variables compared to traditional technologies, for example with how fertilisers and pesticides interact with soil and location.

Futureproofing farmers

The use of AI in agriculture could help farmers and agricultural decision makers to access more accurate data to improve productivity and sustainability. This is particularly important for farming in the developing world where industry estimates suggest that AI tools can impact 70 million farmers by 2020 in India and add $9 billion to farmers’ incomes.

In the developing world, there are fewer barriers for the uptake of AI in agriculture. The capital costs associated with acquiring technology from countries like the UK are comparatively low, for example, when compared to costs associated with large-scale mechanised farming, traditionally central to farming in the developed world. The greater number of smallholder farmers in developing nations creates a significant mass market for smart technology, which could drive its adoption.

However, the value of AI and smart technology in agriculture often fails to focus on the value to the farmer. Innovation in agriculture tends to be driven by productivity and competitiveness in global markets. Although food production yields are shown to have increased, some farmers remain reluctant to adopt new technology. To overcome this, the rollout of new AI technology needs to ensure the motivations, sensibilities, priorities and mindset of farmers are appropriately integrated through dialogue and consultation.

AI-enabled smart technologies could deliver a paradigm change to current agricultural practices and influence positive progress. Smart technologies and robotics may help to identify diseases or infestations in crops, and enable selective crop protection actions, like spraying, to be formulated and applied earlier than is currently achievable.

An agricultural revolution

A growing number of sectors including manufacturing, housing, health, transportation and logistics have already adopted Industry 4.0 – known as the fourth industrial revolution – and there is potential for agriculture to follow. To support this, future modelling and research can establish where, how quickly, and how practically AI can impact the industry. Now policymakers must rise to the challenge of understanding that agriculture is not only a matter of productivity and profitability. Future policy should also focus on the impact agriculture can have on health through diet, labour, and on the environment, building resilience and protecting food-producing ecosystems well into the future.

For AI-enabled smart technologies to impact global agriculture, the agri-food sector must adopt a new mindset towards technology, and enact major changes to infrastructure to accommodate progress. Delivering that culture change means tackling interlinked challenges with policy interventions.

Policy recommendations

There is still a long way to go for AI technology to manage the speed and volume of data processing for mainstream crop productions. Policymakers should look at joined-up investment that supports emerging AI and agri-technologies, from research through to commercial production. This can establish the UK as a global leader in smart agriculture, creating a future export potential, as well as supporting the resilience of UK farming with home-grown technologies.

Partnerships between regulatory and accreditation bodies must be established from the outset to maximise the positive impact of smart technology and AI on agriculture. Commercially damaging delays to uptake can be prevented with a comprehensive national framework of regulation to support the adoption of this technology once it is ready for the commercial market – and this could also give the UK a global edge.

There is a need for a national and international standard for intelligent, autonomous agri-sensing and robotic systems. New agri-technology has the potential to operate safely 24/7 without human supervision. The standard would set out necessary guidelines; for example, requiring that the area where autonomous machinery operates is restricted to prevent human interference. This regulatory change could support mass uptake of the technology. Existing UK working groups exploring regulatory change are already lagging behind the pace of development in new technology. However, policymakers can apply the force of regulation to accelerate the process across the breadth of the agri-technology industry.

The emergence of mass, low-cost, reliable, and accessible smart technology has the potential to be part of the solution to threats to global food supplies. Policymakers and regulators have a significant role to play in bringing this technology to fruition. By implementing these recommendations, decision makers could enable investment in agri-technologies, increase efficiency in agriculture, and reap the benefits of positioning the UK as a global leader in AI and cutting-edge technology.

Bruce Grieve is Chair in Agri-Sensors and Electronics in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at The University of Manchester.