Seaweed farming is being championed as a magic bullet for food systems and the environment, promising to capture carbon, rehabilitate ecosystems and feed the world. Recent reporting from the Guardian investigates one seaweed enterprise, the Climate Foundation, and its mission to win Elon Musk’s $100m Xprize. 

The paper provides an overview of the current and potential future uses of digital technologies in agri-food production, processing and distribution; identifying advantages, disadvantages and barriers to adoption. The paper highlights case studies of digital technology companies working to improve food safety.

This paper considers the potential for synthetically (without agricultural) produced dietary fats to reduce the impact that global diets have on the environment. The paper explores potential inputs for this process, and compares the greenhouse gas and land use emissions saving of scaling various synthetic fat production models compared with organically produced fats.

This report brings together farmers from a variety of agroecological backgrounds to understand what they may want from new technologies and how they decide which technologies are appropriate for their business. Through a series of workshops this report establishes the main values that underpin the decision making of agroecological farmers and which technologies could fit into this philosophy. 

This report is based on the findings of the UK Geospatial Commission’s National Land Data Programme (NLDP). It explores how innovative data science (such as geospatial modelling, combining disparate data sets, and AI) can lead to better land-use management in the UK.

Cultured meat and dairy are emerging as disruptive technologies that some argue could accelerate sustainable agrifood transition in Europe. However, in order for the widespread adoption of cultured meat production and consumption to take place, new laws and policies will need to be introduced. This paper explores three interconnected categories of regulatory intervention that are needed to accommodate this transition in the EU

Nine members of the precision fermentation industry have announced the founding of a new trade organisation, the Precision Fermentation Alliance, to promote precision fermentation as a contributor to a resilient, sustainable food system. The technology, which reprogrammes microbes to make particular molecules, is well-established for making vaccines and enzymes such as rennet. It has recently been applied in the food sector, for example the dairy-identical whey protein made by Perfect Day (one of the founding partners) is already used in some products available in the United States, including ice cream and cream cheese.

This paper reviews the potential contribution of microbial foods to a healthy, resilient and sustainable food system. It covers three main categories: traditional fermented foods such as wine, yoghurt and kimchi; microbial biomass, where the microbes themselves are directly consumed, for example the mycoprotein used in Quorn products; and “cell factories”, otherwise known as precision fermentation, where microbes are genetically modified to produce certain molecules.