Reports that the government is planning to ban solar farms from most of farmland across England has left some farmers and landowners 'dismayed and surprised'.

The new Defra Secretary, Ranil Jayawardena is understood to be against solar panels on farmland because it impedes the government's programme of growth and boosting food production.

Consumers are shunning fruit and vegetables in favour of other produce in a bid to beat increases in grocery prices, a recent report has found.

The figures from data analyst firm IRI show that fruit and vegetables have fallen to 6.3 per cent in terms of retail basket value compared with nine per cent in 2021.

The findings are also echoed in data from YouGov which found that 26 per cent of people stated they had bought fewer fresh vegetables because of the increase in the price of their groceries. The figure increased to 49 per cent for those on lower incomes which follows the same pattern as experienced following the financial crash of 2008.

Defra Secretary Ranil Jayawardena has been accused of giving up on family horticulture farms, as he flew to the Netherlands to look at glasshouse technology to boost home grown fruit and vegetable production.

Lea Valley Growers called the Defra Secretary out for visiting glasshouses abroad, rather than ‘the cucumber capital of Britain’.

Mr Jayawardena announced an industry expert would be appointed to help drive growth of the horticulture industry with the industry consulted on ways to expand modern glasshouses and vertical farms to boost food security.

The public has called for the government to take a cautious approach to introducing gene editing in the livestock sector. The government’s Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill, which paves the way for the use of the technology in England, is currently progressing through parliament.

In a bid to help shape the policy, members of the public were invited by scientific researchers to share views with experts in dialogue sessions. Overall, the participants wanted a wider public debate on gene editing.

They expressed a need for greater clarity on the government’s overall plan for food and farming to help them understand how the new technology fitted in, its impacts, and what was the potential value of animal gene editing.

Liz Truss opposes the installation of solar panels on productive agricultural lands, Downing Street has said, amid reports that ministers are seeking to restrict the development of solar projects on farms in England. Environment Secretary Ranil Jayawardena is also understood to want to protect farmland amid concerns over food security.

Asked about the report, the Prime Minister’s official spokesperson told journalists: “I can point you back to what the Prime Minister said, I think at the start of September, when she said she doesn’t think we should be putting solar panels on productive agricultural lands, because obviously as well as the energy security issue, we face a food security issue. So we need to strike the right balance.”

The Scottish Government’s Agriculture Bill consultation – widely criticised for its lack of detail – has at last found partial favour with one organisation.

However, while the British Society of Plant Breeders (BSPB) has welcomed the Bill’s focus on plant genetics, it has added its voice to growing calls for the government to change its stance on gene editing.

The Scottish Government continues to voice its opposition to the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill going through Westminster. The legislation will exempt plant varieties developed using advanced breeding technologies such as gene editing from current Genetic Modification (GM) rules, and instead regulate them in the same way as conventional varieties.

Climate change and population growth will drive the need for ‘smart’ crops to meet increased food demands, according to a new report. The huge amount of data that would be needed to ensure the highest crop efficiency will lead to greater automation in farming by 2030.

The report by GlobalData, a data and analytics company, predicts that farms in the 2030s will become ‘smart’, driven by the need to produce more food on less land. To maximise yield, farms will need to collect and monitor huge amounts of data from their crops and livestock, the report says.

EU agriculture ministers are pushing the European Commission to relax rules on new genomic techniques (NGTs), arguing this is needed to bolster the sector in the face of increasing droughts, climate change and yield losses.

“We only need to modify our old legislative framework regulating modern breeding techniques,” Czech agriculture minister Zdenek Nekula said during a press conference following an informal meeting of EU agriculture ministers on Friday (16 September). According to Nekula, this framework is a “limitation” for European farmers which brings about “brain drain to countries outside of the EU,” leading to significant damage.

Citing concerns that a lack of fertilisers, combined with soaring energy prices and climate change, could see a dramatic drop in agricultural production in the EU, the Czech minister said EU farmers could be helped by “using innovation and results of research in agriculture, stressing that the loss of yields of key crops is a “risk that we cannot underestimate”.

Climate change, food insecurity and seasonal shortages have triggered calls to loosen regulation for genetically-modified food and seed technologies in the EU.

"We can help farmers by using innovation," the Czech Republic agriculture minister Zdeněk Nekula, whose country currently holds the rotating EU Council presidency, said in a press conference on Friday (16 September). Nekula said new so-called genomic techniques can help make crops more resilient to drought, frost, diseases and pests.

"These solutions aren't expensive and they don't require investment worth billions. We only need to modify the old legislative framework, [to support] regulating modern breeding techniques," he added. "We need modern rules that will make sure that our production is safe and environmentally sustainable," he said, calling current genetically-modified organism (GMO) rules a "limitation" for European farmers that are causing a brain drain to countries outside of the bloc.

The EU is delaying plans to halve the use of pesticides over fears the move could cut food production and raise prices of critical products in the bloc.

The Sustainable Use of Pesticides regulation intends to reduce the amount of chemicals deployed by 50 per cent by 2030 but an impact assessment said its implementation would likely reduce production.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has increased energy costs for food producers and cut imports from those countries of grains and other products.

Converting farms from livestock to arable would lead to regular crop failures, according to analysis of one the UK’s largest beef and sheep rearing regions. The study focused on the southwest of England in response to questions over what could happen to UK livestock farming if society shifts toward more plant-based diets.

It found that the chances of successfully growing winter wheat on fields once used to raise livestock could be as little as 28% in future, as increased rainfall will make sowing the crop impossible in some years.

Forecasts show that in the absence of climate change, yields could be greater than 14 tonnes per hectare - but when the near certain impact of increased future rainfall on sowing and harvest dates were included, it fell in some situations to less than 3t per hectare.

Bill Gates says the global hunger crisis is so immense that food aid cannot fully address the problem. What’s also needed, Gates argues, are the kinds of innovations in farming technology that he has long funded to try to reverse the crisis documented in a report released Tuesday by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Gates points, in particular, to a breakthrough he calls “magic seeds,” crops engineered to adapt to climate change and resist agricultural pests. The Gates Foundation on Tuesday also released a map that models how climate change will likely affect growing conditions for crops in various countries to highlight the urgent need for action.