Agri-tech, robotics and a centralised investment framework are all needed to transform and strengthen the UKʼs food security, a harrowing think tank report has recommended.

Badger culling will end in England within five years as part of a shift in the fight against bovine tuberculosis, the government said on Friday.

As part of the new TB eradication strategy, badgers will be vaccinated instead of killed and work to develop a separate vaccine for livestock will also be stepped up. The government hopes the strategy will deliver its target to eradicate the disease in England by 2038.

While campaigners Badger Trust criticised the government for allowing culling already licensed this year to go ahead, the National Farmers Union said culling had worked against TB and shouldn't be ruled out.

HB4 wheat, a drought-tolerant genetically modified wheat variety, can be safely grown and bred in the United States, according to the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS).

The agency's determination makes the U.S. the fourth country in the world to green-light production of HB4 wheat, following Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay.

The firm behind a new agri-robot which rolls out next year for trials promises it can harvest fruit and vegetables at the same speed and quality as human pickers.

Fieldwork Robotics, Cambridge-based developers of modular harvesting robots, has announced that it has developed a new robotic model, the 'Fieldworker 1'.

The robot allows more accurate detection of berry ripeness and a heightened picking speed, allowing the robots to harvest at the same speed and quality as human pickers, according to the firm.

Leading global pig genetics company PIC has highlighted how improve genetics can deliver a major contribution to making pork production more sustainable.

As pressure mounts for Europe to improve sustainability in agriculture, PIC said it has ‘rigorously validated that its genetics are a credible pathway to achieving environmental goals’.

It worked with global environmental modeling expert Dr Greg Thoma to complete a composite Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in Europe, which confirmed that a ‘full programme PIC pig’ (sire + dam) delivers a 7.7% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to the industry average.

Two experts have accused the BBC of “discouraging an open and evidence-based conversation about sustainable food production” with its “bias towards small-scale, extensive agriculture”.

Retired livestock geneticist professor Helen Sang and consultant Daniel Pearsall said the broadcaster had presented a one-sided view of intensive livestock production in its recent article “More cattle kept in UK ‘megafarms’, BBC finds”.

The article included comments from campaign group Compassion in World Farming about how the reported rise in large-scale cattle farming was symptomatic of a “desperate” and “broken” food system.

Farmers and industry bodies have shared their frustration and concerns after misinformed comments made by River Action UK chief executive James Wallace on BBC Breakfast (August 21), when speaking about river pollution.

Mr Wallace said: "The problem originates here with sewage and also with farms, let us not forget all those growth hormones pumped into chickens and cattle and so on in factory farms, that too has a big impact."

The comment went unchallenged during the interview, but was later corrected. The Countryside Land and Business Association posted on X: "Contrary to what was claimed on BBC Breakfast this morning, there is NO use of growth hormones in livestock feed in the UK. "

A project that brings trials of precision-bred cereal crops onto commercial farms in Europe is now underway, researchers confirm.

Trial plots of a precision-bred wheat variety, which could lead to a ‘greener’ farming system, have now been harvested, marking the start of a new project.

PROBITY, Platform to Rate Organisms Bred for Improved Traits and Yield, brings farmers, scientists and food manufacturers together to trial the production and processing of precision-bred crops to accelerate understanding of their value to sustainable food and farming.

Farmers could be warned about the appearance of crop pathogens in near real-time, thanks to technology that collects and sequences the air around their fields.

New research suggests the AirSeq approach, developed at the Earlham Institute and Natural History Museum, could replace existing methods for detecting infection, which look for visible symptoms on the plants - at which point it is often too late.

All living organisms shed fragments of their DNA into the environment, which provides opportunities to identify and monitor biodiversity from the traces of biological material in the air.

Queen guitarist Sir Brian May says new research shows cattle could be passing bovine tuberculosis (bTB) between themselves, and that badgers are not a significant factor in the spread of the disease. Sir Brian, 77, helped conduct the research presented in a new BBC documentary, and says his campaigning against badger culling to tackle bTB "has become as important to me as music".

Cattle are regularly tested and destroyed if the disease is found, with more than 50,000 slaughtered in the UK between April last year and March this year.

A leading vet said Sir Brian's findings could not be viewed in isolation, while a farmer who has lost 500 of his herd to the disease said badgers "do contribute" to the bTB problem.

Domestic food production is set to be hit as the battle for land use ramps up, with climate, environmental, energy and housing demands all on the rise.

According to a Natural England (NE) report published last week, food production in the UK could decline by up to 25% if measures to meet the most ambitious climate targets are enacted.

And in a separate development, the new Labour government is consulting on dropping a clause in the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) that gives planning authorities a responsibility to consider food security when approving applications.

The new government has been urged to help ensure self-sufficiency doesn’t drop any further as new figures show levels for some food are at the lowest since records began.

The importance of increasing self-sufficiency levels has been highlighted today (14 August), the day which the national larder would run empty if the public only ate UK food from 1 January.

According to 2023 Defra figures, the UK is 62% self-sufficient in food. While this reflects similar levels of the past decade, some sectors have seen a recent decline. For example, the UK’s self-sufficiency in fresh vegetables is at its lowest since records began in 1988 at 53%.