Call for Evidence: Innovation and Global Food Security

1. Introduction

1.1 Food security today: towards a framework of collaboration and technological pluralism

With a huge and growing global population, an ever-increasing proportion of which makes no contribution to the production or supply of food, mostly because they live in cities, innovation that enhances food security has never been more important. Food security depends on access to a sufficient quantity of nutritious food. While official statistics demonstrate that food production has soared globally and that this has benefited millions of people, food security remains a huge problem, with millions still going hungry or living with diseases caused by poor nutrition. In addition, agricultural biodiversity is encountering high levels of stress. With an impending climate emergency, there is much to concern us.

Quality matters, as does access. Malnutrition (undernourishment, obesity/overnutrition, and ‘hidden hunger’ or micronutrient deficiencies), which is due to both underconsumption and overconsumption, and the low-quality diets of many people, with all the attendant health problems from diabetes epidemics to nutritional deficiency diseases, continue to afflict millions of people around the world. By focusing on ending hunger and malnutrition, the Sustainable Development Goals reflect the growing awareness that an exclusive focus on undernutrition is inadequate and that a broader, more comprehensive approach is needed.

The hyper-abundance of food products in the developed world and the overall alleviation of undernutrition are largely attributable to modern agriculture, including the varieties commonly used by public- and private-sector breeders. Thus, bringing scientific expertise into the enterprise of crop improvement is surely a good thing. Agricultural intensification is essential for increasing agricultural production and contributing to food security. Scientifically bred seeds and modern digital and biological technologies certainly have roles to play. But industrialised forms of food production which are high cost and likely to incur debt, are risky, environmentally unsustainable, and are unsuitable in many parts of the world. This is especially so where social, economic or environment conditions are suboptimal or generally unsuitable for industrial agriculture. According to a recent, highly authoritative report,

More than 90 percent of the 570 million farms worldwide are managed by an individual or a family, relying predominately on family labour. These farms produce more than 80 percent of the world’s food in terms of value. Globally, 84 percent of family farms are smaller than 2 hectares and manage only 12 percent of all agricultural land. While small farms tend to have higher yields than larger farms, labour productivity is less and most small family farmers are poor and food-insecure.[1]

Increasing productivity per hectare of land is essential as the global human population continues to rise and the proportion of people who produce food, whether farmers, pastoralists, fishers, hunters, or gatherers, continues to decrease. However, increased food productivity per hectare of land alone does not improve food security. Nutritional quality across the full range of foods consumed by humans, rather than just the major staple foods such as rice, wheat, maize, soybeans, and potatoes, is also essential.

Dependence on monocultural production is inherently risky and is also harmful for agricultural biodiversity. Low-input agroecological methods (agriculture based on ecological principles) can help considerably in this regard.[2] In addition, there are many underutilised crops harvested by members of traditional societies that provide essential micro-nutrients missing from highly domesticated so-called modern crop varieties.[3] Indeed, small-scale farmers continue to be major suppliers of a broad range of foods for all, including poor people, food that may deliver better nutritional results than many modern varieties. The latter are bred for many possible traits the pursuit of which may compromise nutritional quality.[4] Productivity should no longer be seen as purely about crude measures per hectare of bulk harvest volumes without consideration of nutritional factors. In this respect, all is not well with the global food and agriculture innovation system. According to a study by the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition:

Today’s food systems are too focused on food quantity and not enough on quality. They are not helping consumers to make healthy and affordable food choices consistent with optimal nutrition outcomes. In fact, the trend is in the opposite direction. The multiple forms of malnutrition will not diminish unless policy makers and private sector business leaders work together to reshape food systems in ways that will advance the goal of healthier diets for all.[5]

Crucial as it is to promote plant innovation in favour of food security, we must cease to disregard the capabilities, needs, and interests of small-scale farmers as has been mostly the case with policymakers involved in promoting innovation, rural development, trade, and food security, and mobilising investment in agriculture and the scientific research community. Meanwhile, the sustainability of the vital roles played by such farmers in food production, good nutrition, and conservation through the use of genetic diversity is under threat, and they tend to suffer from extreme poverty.[6] This is a massive policy and market failure.

New and emerging technologies, preferably those developed or at least applied in close collaboration with farmers and farming communities, can assist considerably in achieving this. But these will never be enough. Neither small-scale farmers in agriculturally biodiverse areas,[7] nor those applying modern scientific knowledge and techniques, can alone permanently solve the problem of lack of food security. We need to use and further develop technologies from a wide range of sources: the innovation ‘menu’ is a very broad one if we are open-minded and know where to look. Thankfully, there is growing realisation that innovation to improve people’s lives in pursuit of food security and sustainability can be enhanced by collaboration (“co-production”)[8] between formal scientists and traditional communities especially in areas of the world rich in biodiversity and/or endemic species that tend to be neglected.[9] Such approaches as participatory action research and participatory plant breeding can help a great deal, and these need support. But there is so much more to do.

Ideally, a substantial portion of investment should be targeted towards the needs of small-scale farmers in their dual roles as producers and guardians of plant genetic diversity. At present, such targeting tends to be lacking. The Global Panel in the same study summarises the current imbalance:

The Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers (CGIAR), which commands the most significant capacity to conduct agricultural research and development in low- and medium-income countries, still allocates about half of its resources to rice and maize. In the private sector, about 45% of research investment is directed towards just one crop: maize.[10]

Of course, one should not be romantic about traditional agriculture, if for no other reason than that many of these systems have been degraded through no fault of the local people themselves and no longer function as they did. Nonetheless, small-scale agricultural systems based on plant genetic diversity are intact in many areas of the world. Indeed, small-scale farmers are the guardians of the world’s in-situ agricultural biodiversity. Their importance for innovation cannot be understated. In addition to maintaining biodiversity, their agroecological practices, where they persist, could potentially, subject to productive collaboration with scientists, be scaled up and more widely adopted.[11]

One fruitful area of such cooperation is agroforestry, which involves the cultivation and use of domesticated trees alongside crop cultivation and, in some cases livestock-keeping.[12] It is seen as a way to reverse land degradation due to the adoption of inappropriate practices. But despite its recent coinage, traditional agroforestry systems persist and go back centuries.[13] We cannot all return to a preindustrial age, and subsistence farming is not going to feed urban populations with now form the majority of humans. Yet there is much going on at local level which persists in the face of the absence of income support, subsidy, or of much in the way of modern infrastructure, is highly adaptive, and that could form the basis of scaled up and scientifically sound production systems for the benefit of many more millions of people and do so sustainably.

Similarly, though much maligned, peasant intensification practices in parts of Africa which are certainly pro-technology but are not based on ones imposed by biotechnology advocates, have also proved highly effective.[14] The imposition of inappropriate laws and regulations by governments are all factors in the degradation of effective local ways to produce food through innovative practices all too frequently dismissed as backward

1.2 Structure of the submission

In light of the framework presented above, this submission addresses three points of those indicated in the Call for Evidence and specifically:

Section 2 will analyse all four issues under point 1, ‘how scientific and technological innovations can be combined with low-technology practices to support global food security’.
Section 3 focuses on point 2, ‘the effects of these innovations on the global agricultural system’, and in particular on the second issue, ‘whether technological dependence in agriculture could create new vulnerabilities’.
Section 4 will discuss point 3 ‘the UK’s role in achieving global food security’ and, specifically, the first issue ‘how UK universities and research institutions can contribute to global solutions’.
Finally, Section 5 presents the recommendations the authors present to the Committee.

2. How scientific and technological innovations can be combined with low-technology practices to support global food security

2.1 The potential role of emerging technologies developed outside agriculture, such as AI

Emerging technologies, including AI, can play an important role in enhancing efficiency and sustainability by constituting the core of ‘precision agriculture’, an approach to farming based on technological innovation, automation, and big data.[15] These systems integrate field data collection and analysis to complete several tasks such as crop health monitoring, harvest prediction, and optimisation of fertilisers and pesticides and more, while Machine learning algorithms enable predictive analytics for climate modelling, planting cycles, and harvesting optimisation [16]

These techniques have proven valuable for enhancing productivity and improving food safety. For instance,

i. AI applications in agriculture have demonstrated significant potential for enhancing crop monitoring and management systems. Among the others, Convolutional Neural Networks and other deep learning techniques have constantly achieved 90%+ accuracy in crop disease detection;[17]

ii. Machine Learning is applied to drone and satellite imagery to build detailed weather models that help farmers make more informed decisions to maximize their yield;[18]

iii. AI enhanced robots are increasingly automating farming,[19] performing important functions such as filling labour shortages, provide support meeting sustainability demands, and playing a crucial role in tasks related to precision agriculture such as precision harvesting and chemical management.

In general, digitalisation has become an integral part of advanced farming in Europe, with important results in terms of productivity and reduction of environmental impact.[20]

2.2 The role of biotechnology (e.g. genetic engineering and gene editing techniques such as CRISPR) in increasing crop yields and resistance to climate change

CRISPR/Cas9 system (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats/CRISPR-associated protein 9) is a precision genome editing technology that enables scientists to make specific, targeted changes to DNA sequences in living organisms. The system functions as ‘molecular scissors’ guided by RNA to cut DNA at predetermined locations, allowing genetic material to be added, removed, or altered with an unprecedented accuracy.[21]

Among other things, this system represents a groundbreaking approach to enhance global food security. In sum, plants respond to environmental stresses through complex networks involving, among the others, compatible osmolyte accumulation, antioxidant enzyme activation, and changes in root architecture. CRISPR/Cas9 technology allows targeted manipulation of these pathways, including modifications to genes controlling proline biosynthesis, reactive oxygen species scavenging, and water use efficiency.[22]

Generally speaking, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has recommended research on the improvement of crop genetics as a viable action for a sustainable global food system, essential to adapt agriculture to the effects of anthropogenic climate change.[23] In this context, recent scholarly literature confirms that CRISPR/Cas9 editing, usually integrated with AI tools,[24] is indeed promising, as it has already achieved successful results in enhancing drought, heat, salinity and flood tolerance of various modified crops, such as rice, wheat, maize and soybeans.[25] The question arises as to the transferability of these technologies to areas of the world where very different environmental and socio-economic and cultural conditions apply. (See below).

2.3 The ethical concerns associated with high-tech solutions in agriculture

Before we address ethical concerns, we need to overcome some common misperceptions and assumptions. First, and most fundamentally, creativity is absolutely not the sole preserve of suited knowledge workers in glassy office blocks, professional artists and musicians, and white-coated laboratory scientists. If necessity really is the mother of invention, would we not expect to see most innovation where the needs are greatest? And no needs are greater than those of desperately poor people getting themselves and their families through each day alive and well by living off the land. It is completely false to just assume, as we tend to do, that the world’s knowledge and innovation “hotspots” are urban areas located almost exclusively in Europe, North America, and East Asia.

Second, ‘technology’ and ‘innovation’ are overused terms; they are also much abused. Technology has both intangible and tangible aspects but is inherently practical. Science and technology are typically assumed to be distinct but related. That said, not all technology is generated by scientists in the first place, a good example from history being the barber and wigmaker Richard Arkwright’s famous invention of the cotton spinning machines he patented in 1769 and 1775. On the other hand, some science is also technology because once discovered, an idea’s practical application is immediately obvious and simple to implement.

Nowadays, though, putting even quite groundbreaking discoveries can take decades to be put into practice, such as monoclonal antibodies. This is especially the case for so-called complex technologies entailing huge upfront costs. These include many gene technologies, such as the genetic modification of plants and animals and metabolic engineering (synthetic biology). There is a tendency to overhype them long before their transformative potential can possibly be realised.

As for innovation, these may be divided into three kinds: technological, market and institutional innovations. Policy innovations can be seen as a fourth type, although they seem to fit into institutional innovations, especially given the rather expansive definition of “institutions” that is common in the economic and political science literature. As such, innovation is much more than coming up with brand-new ideas with potentially transformative uses.

This is just the beginning of the innovation process. While few people would question that Apple Computers is a highly innovative company. Yet the innovations which made the company famous, such as the graphical user interface and the mouse, were “borrowed” from Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Paradoxically, this does not mean that Apple was not innovative. Ideas and technologies confined to a laboratory, no matter how ingenious, are not innovations. It is only once they, or the products or services embodying them, “escape” from the lab, workshop, or individual farmer’s field and enter the world beyond that they become innovations. The “world beyond” may be just the community or it may be the whole world. It is difficult to think of an individual subsistence farmer’s own “innovation”, such as a new cultivation method or plant variety, as being one until it affects other people in some way or another. Innovations must have a societal aspect to be “innovations”. On the other hand, if it turns out that “innovation” came originally from somewhere else, then it is an innovation.

To summarise and offer some inferences from the discussion thus far, innovation is not invention. Assessed from a distance, innovative processes are always collective and do not happen entirely in a single location. They are not susceptible to strict definitions of novelty or originality, as are inventions which are globally unique. It is the making available that constitutes an innovation. Here, individuals may play a larger role. Patenting is largely based on a convenient fiction: that we can break up both inventing and the inventions themselves into discrete units which are attributed to individuals and can be bought, sold, and licenced. However, patents protect inventions, not innovations.

Second, as the great mid-20th century economist Schumpeter claimed, innovations are mixtures or combinations and, as such, are not new in the absolute sense. It is about “mixing”, whether we talk of things or ways of doing something, about using and making available what may already be known, practiced, or used, including new combinations of applied ideas, practices, or products. It may entail some transformation in the forms of adaptation or modification but not necessarily to the extent of making it into something else. Recovering traditional potato varieties and bringing them back into cultivation, as is being done by some Andean farming communities, is an innovation just as much as is the breeding and diffusion of new varieties never used before.

Third, innovations are quantifiable. However, the conventional methodologies are not very helpful. Economists tend to use proxy measures, such as the number of patents, to assess how innovative an economy or business is. To be fair, many, if not most, admit that this is not entirely satisfactory. Moreover, quantifying innovations implies that innovations have discrete boundaries. Often this will not be the case. As for qualitative assessment, in the business world that is done by letting the market decide or else by valuing them as business assets. There is much to be said for treating innovations qualitatively by the extent to which they are beneficial for the groups that come up with them, perhaps in terms of human development, as defined and elaborated by the United Nations Development Programme. However, other criteria are possible.

As for new and emerging technologies whose promise appears self-evident and whose mass-uptake appears virtually inevitable, we can never be sure which ones will win and those that will fall by the wayside or simply be rejected in many parts of the world. On 5 December 2000, the Daily Mail published a story with the following headline: ‘Internet “may be just a passing fad as millions give up on it” ’.

On the other hand, the rapid emergence of text-producing AI programs, such as ChatGPT, came as a massive surprise to many experts, though for many of us it is quite poor and unreliable. As for genetically engineered beta-carotene-producing rice, branded as “Golden Rice”, first conceived in the 1990s and massively hyped as a solution to vitamin A deficiencies in poor people’s diets, it is fair to conclude that it has been a complete failure. Meanwhile the simple manufacture and distribution of vitamin A tablets would be another way to solve the problem.

At this point, it feels necessary in the present context for us to urge caution before assuming that a successful innovation in one setting may be easily transferable to a completely different setting and is beneficial for the recipients. Transfers of technological innovations, such as those associated with modernism and industrial agriculture, may leave farmers worse off than before and reduce productivity over time, including food security. It does not help that these are often non-participatory and on occasions even coercive.[26]

Their adoption may be prevented by high licencing fees, knowledge and skill asymmetries hindering absorptive capacities, or legal/regulatory barriers. It may even be that an innovation is so bound to local cultural and spiritual values, as well as social and economic conditions, that its transplantation to another location would simply be impossible.

The characteristics of a conducive environment for innovation are often evident only in hindsight, and the possibility for such an environment to be transferrable is not something to be relied upon. What makes for an innovative environment may be hard to explain, whether we are talking of agricultural communities or business parks, but it is a great deal harder to reproduce and with successful results.

Hence, the need for a pro-technology perspective to take a middle ground, acknowledging the massive promise of technologies old and new, but avoiding the hype and stressing the need for a strong dose of healthy scepticism with respect to the universal applicability of new ones however promising. Thus far, genetically modified crops are mostly limited to soybean, maize, canola and cotton and seems to be a better fit for industrial large-scale agriculture, their main traits being herbicide tolerance and insect resistance. Therefore, despite the early hype, they are at best part of the solution in a world in which small-scale farmers have such an important role to play. This is one of many reasons why the industrial and high-tech agricultural model is not globally transferrable and has the potential to do more harm than good. If they are not acceptable to small-scale farmers, the latter have every right to reject them.

2.4 The use of low-tech solutions that can be easily diffused

Despite their poverty, small-scale farmers, who are the guardians of genetic diversity, have a wealth of knowledge and expertise to offer. In a sense, they are the ‘invisible innovators’ whose guardianship over the genetic resource base that helps guarantee food security in the future has often been overlooked.[27] Their sophisticated agro-ecological knowledge, innovations, and practices have much to contribute in terms of identifying and classifying resources, varieties, and breeds, and subsisting in harsh marginal environments while adapting their practices to mitigate the effects of climate change. We list three studies that support this statement, of which two point to the benefits of collaboration between small-scale farmers and scientists, but there are many more.[28]

Notwithstanding the well-intended provisions of several international instruments over the years, we continue to provide weak incentives for small-scale farmers to continue providing arguably indispensable public goods that benefit all of us. Of course, small-scale farmers do not just maintain genetic diversity in situ: they use this diversity to be major providers of food security in many developing countries, and indeed in the world.

Few innovation experts pay much regard to Indigenous and other communities “embodying traditional lifestyles” to use the wording of the Convention on Biological Diversity. In fact, for Indigenous communities, innovation is about combining different elements (pieces of knowledge, ideas new and old, customary practices, different techniques, biological materials or artefacts etc.) that may be entirely internally generated but often, if not usually, will not be. Indigenous/traditional small-scale farming communities use appropriate technologies and have been shown to experiment with on-farm mixing of traditional cultivars and sometimes modern ones.

Innovation takes place everywhere from the fields of traditional farmers to the laboratories of Pfizer. Tradition can and does serve as a milieu and a starting point for incremental innovative activity on a large scale. Ethnocentrism and cultural bias need to be abandoned.

Accordingly, while storehouses of ideas, techniques, and products must include universities, agriculture ministries, corporations, libraries, patent, and other databases, we must not overlook others, such as farmers’ fields, cultural landscapes, and the memories of tribal elders, healers, shamans, cultivators, herders, and craftspeople. Technologies do not travel in one direction, and nor do innovations. It is absolutely crucial that practitioners and policymakers including funding facilities and agencies are fully aware of this.

Rural development, plant, agricultural scientists, and other professionals have much to contribute. To maximise the positive effects of their expertise, a close engagement with small-scale farmers is probably essential. Otherwise, there is a danger of enacting policy measures that may inadvertently damage food security and plant genetic diversity. Accordingly, equitable partnerships of farmer and pastoral communities with the formal plant science sector, including the seed banks, need to be established. Small-scale farmers and their communities are likely to have their own priorities regarding which resources need to be conserved; however, much can be gained from the formal scientific sector working with local farming communities.

In Peru, for example, an association of six rural communities called the Potato Park (Parque de la Papa) negotiated the repatriation of potato varieties held in the collection of the International Potato Center in Lima and has become a strong advocate of the sharing of plant genetic resources and appropriate technologies without the use of intellectual property rights. The Park is also seeking to share its own varieties with farming communities in other parts of the world.[29]

3. The effects of these innovations on the global agricultural system: whether technological dependence in agriculture could create new vulnerabilities

Although the use of innovative technologies in the field of precision agriculture will bring to several benefits, discussed earlier, their increasing use has already created increased risks in various fields. This submission focuses on three of them specifically: (a) cybersecurity, (b) data security, and (c) dependency risks.

Cybersecurity risks

Cyberattacks have multiplied over the last five years, with the agricultural sector and neighbouring fields regularly targeted. The following examples, focused on the US and UK contexts, provide a clear picture of how tangible these risks are.

The US Department of Agriculture, quoting the FBI as source, states that ‘… agricultural cooperatives have been targeted by a variety of cyber-attacks due to their crucial role in the food supply chain and the time-sensitive nature of their operations’ and that ‘[a]n attack during peak seasons could significantly disrupt the supply of essential goods such as seeds and fertilizers, thereby affecting planting schedules and ultimately, the food supply chain.[30]’ In particular, it is mentioned that an attack on a cooperative of grain producers in Iowa affected 40% of US producers.[31]

In the UK, two recent cases highlight the vulnerability of the supply chain necessary to fill supermarket shelves. On 14 May 2025, Peter Green Chilled, a Somerset-based logistics firm specialising in temperature-controlled food distribution, was hit by a ransomware. The company supplies major UK supermarkets including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Aldi, M&S, Waitrose, Asda, Ocado, Co-op, and Morrisons. The attack forced the company to halt order processing operations, leading to significant consequences for smaller food producers who relied on Peter Green Chilled’s services, forcing them to discard goods.[32] Instead, on 21 November. 2024, a major ransomware attack on Blue Yonder, a US-based supply chain management software provider, severely impacted UK supermarkets, disrupting warehouse management systems for several major retailers.[33]

Data Security Risks

The vast amount of data collected by smart systems raises significant privacy and security concerns, and precision farming technologies are no exception. Advanced farming techniques have led to an increase in the volume of data at risk, broadening the sector's vulnerability to breaches. These security breaches can result in unauthorised access to farmers’ confidential data, including identity theft, financial loss, and disruption of the food supply chain. Security breaches can occur intentionally or unintentionally, with human error and system vulnerabilities playing a key role. Therefore, this submission highlights the need to protect data and IT assets on farms by raising awareness, promoting security best practices and standards, and embedding security practices into the systems.[34]

Dependency Risks

The increasing reliance on digital services and platforms deepens dependency and concentrates critical services in the hands of a few companies. This can lead to problematic farm dependency, oligopolies, and monopolies. Consequently, the risk of simultaneous failures due to cyberattacks, Internet outages, and human errors significantly increases and could lead to food production loss as well as damage to the overall production infrastructure.[35]

Furthermore, some scholars suggest that while digitalisation enables the optimisation and automation of agricultural production, it can also lead to a decrease in knowledge and judgment skills for farmers, increasing their dependence on external actors.[36]

4. The UK’s role in achieving global food security: How UK universities and research institutions can contribute to global solutions.

UK Universities and Research Institution contribute to global solutions in the area of food security and innovation in various ways, three of which will be examined below.

Learning and Teaching

50. UK universities have developed innovative educational programs to address the complexities of food systems. For instance, the School of Law at the University of Leeds offers a variety of modules focusing on Food Law, the Right to Food, Intellectual Property, and Sustainable Food Production.[37] Another important programme is the Interdisciplinary Food Systems Teaching and Learning (IFSTAL) educational programme, developed across five UK universities to address various themes related to food system complexity.[38]

Research on Innovative Agricultural Systems and Sustainability

Agricultural research in the UK maintains world-class status, with 5 universities in the world’s Top 100 of QS University Ranking for ‘Agriculture and Forestry’.[39]

In the Country, the majority of research on Agriculture and related field is conducted by the Agricultural Universities Council UK (AUC), representing 16 universities.[40] According to the AUC’s ‘Research Strategy 2023’, UK universities collectively invest an estimated £56 million annually in agricultural research, split between basic science (£31 million) and applied research (£25 million). This investment is distributed across a decentralised network of institutions, with research on most agricultural themes—from basic and applied plant and animal science to soils and agri-tech—being conducted across multiple universities rather than being concentrated in a few specialised centres.

The sector encompasses over 40 projects exceeding £1 million in agriculture-related research infrastructure investment during the most recent Research Excellence Framework (REF) period, totalling £365 million. This includes state-of-the-art laboratories, precision livestock buildings, data science facilities, greenhouses, and agri-tech incubators.[41]
The Global Food and Environment Institute (GFEI), established in 2017 at the University of Leeds, conducts interdisciplinary research to address, among others, food security, sustainable development, and dietary health challenges. In particular, the Institute operates through four strategic research themes: Agriculture and Environment, Urban Food Consumption, Food in the Global South, and International Food Supply Chains.[42] Another project developed by the University of Leeds is the ‘Smart Farm’, a 317-hectare research farm where experiments are conducted on several techniques and technologies related to precision agriculture, such as crop growth optimisation; agricultural policy, trade and governance; Artificial intelligence and robotics; big data analysis and machine learning and more.[43]

Technological Advancement

Focusing specifically on technological advancement, UK universities have distinguished themselves with world-class breakthroughs. This section presents a small sample of recent notable case studies.

i. In the field of precision agriculture, the University of Leeds, in its ‘Smart Farm’ presented earlier, has successfully tested novel technology such as multi-spectral imaging systems that monitor crop growth and density in real time, soil sensors tracking temperature, humidity, and groundwater composition, weather monitoring stations with predictive analytics capabilities, and integrated AI platforms that analyse data to assess and enhance crop performance.[44]

ii. In the field of climate-smart technology, in 2021-2024 a group of universities, led by the University of Durham and that included other UK institutions such as Leeds and Bristol, completed a NERC funded project aimed at developing cosmic ray neutron sensors capable to interact directly with an Internet-of-Things Smart Water Management Platform for precision irrigation.[45]

iii. In the field of controlled-environment agriculture, the University of Sheffield is conducting various projects aimed at optimising growing conditions by regulating factors such as light, temperature, humidity, and nutrients.[46]

5. Recommendations

59. The analysis provided above suggests the following policy recommendations, ordered according to the structure of the submission.

Recommendations related to Section 1: General Food Security Framework

Support International Small-Scale Farmer Investment. Direct a minimum of 40% of UK agricultural R&D funding towards small-scale farming innovations that combine low-tech with modern technology.
Stimulate participatory research. Create dedicated funding streams for participatory research that directly engages small-scale farmers as co-innovators rather than making them passive recipients of technology transfer.

Recommendations related to Section 2: Technology Integration in farming

AI Regulatory sandboxes. Establish regulatory sandboxes to allow controlled testing of AI-powered farming technologies while ensuring data sovereignty for farmers. This is already done by universities, like in the case of the ‘Smart Farm’ of the University of Leeds, described above at paragraph 54.
Open Source Innovation. Mandate that publicly funded agricultural technologies be made available under open-source licencing to prevent dependency on proprietary systems and facilitate the spread of know-how.

Recommendations related to Section 3: Risk and vulnerabilities management

Mandatory Cybersecurity Standards. Require all agricultural technology providers to meet minimum cybersecurity standards before market entry with regular independent audits.
Agricultural Data Protection Act. Establish comprehensive legal frameworks to protect farmer data ownership and prevent monopolistic control by technology companies.
Incentives. Provide tax incentives for: (a) farmers that maintain both high-tech and low-tech operational capabilities to reduce technological dependency risks; (b) farmers who participate in regular update courses to ensure the knowledge and respect of all the state-of-the-art cybersecurity standards

Recommendations related to Section 4: UK leadership role and scientific research

Increase Research Investment. Double the current £56 million annual university agricultural research budget, with a specific allocation to Social Sciences and Humanities. Food Security is not just a matter of technology; it involves and requires a deep understanding of society, anthropology, history, law, psychology, and a number of other fields not directly linked to applied technology and agricultural studies alone.
Parliamentary Science Capacity. Establish a dedicated Parliamentary Office for Agricultural Innovation that provides regular briefings to MPs on emerging food security technologies and their policy implications.

6 September 2025

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Hazrati M, Dara R and Kaur J, ‘On-Farm Data Security: Practical Recommendations for Securing Farm Data’ (2022) 6 Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 1

Interdisciplinary Food Systems Teaching and Learning (IFSTAL) < https://www.ifstal.ac.uk>

Jinek M, Chylisnki K, Fonfara I and others, ‘A Programmable Dual-RNA-Guided DNA Endonuclease in Adaptive Bacterial Immunity’ (2012) 337(6096) Science 816

Kuntke F, Linsner S, Steinbrink E and others, ‘Resilience in Agriculture: Communication and Energy Infrastructure Dependencies of German Farmers’ (2022) 13 International Journal of Disaster Risk Science 214

Lansing JS, Priests and Programmers: Technologies of Power in the Engineered Landscape of Bali (Princeton University Press 1991)

Li G, An L, Yang W and others, ‘Integrated biotechnological and AI innovations for crop improvement’ (2025) 643 Nature 925

Misereor, ‘Small-scale Farmer Innovation: How Agricultural Research Works Together with Farmers’ (2016) <https://www.misereor.org/fileadmin/user_upload_misereororg/publication/en/foodsecurity/dossier-small-scale-farmer-innovation-2016.pdf >

Mohamed HI, Khan A and Basit A, ‘CRISPR‑Cas9 System Mediated Genome Editing Technology: An Ultimate Tool to Enhance Abiotic Stress in Crop Plants’ (2024) 24 Journal of Soil Science and Plant Nutrition 1799

Morris CE and Sands DC, ‘The Breeder’s Dilemma: Yield or Nutrition?’ (2006) 24(9) Nature Biotechnology 1078

Pandey DK and Mishra R, ‘Towards sustainable agriculture: Harnessing AI for global food security’ (2024) 12 Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture 72

QS Top Universities, ‘QS World University Rankings by Subject 2025: Agriculture & Forestry’ < https://www.topuniversities.com/university-subject-rankings/agriculture-forestry?countries=gb>

Singh Jassal P and Marak JSR, ‘Harnessing Biotechnology for Climate-Resilient for Crop Innovations’ in Rajan R, Ahmad F, Pandey K (eds), Innovations in Climate Resilient Agriculture (Springer 2025)

Pakal I, Kunduracioglu I, Alma MH and others, ‘A systematic review of deep learning techniques for plant diseases’ (2024) 57 Artificial Intelligence Review 304

Scott JC, Seeing Life a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (Yale University Press 1998)

Soil Association, ‘What is agroecology?’ <http://soilassociation.org/causes-campaigns/a-ten-year-transition-to-agroecology/what-is-agroecology/>.

Stone GD, The Agricultural Dilemma: How Not to Feed the World (Routledge 2022)

Tang H, Zhang L, Xie X and others, ‘Resilience of Maize to Environmental Stress: Insights into Drought and Heat Tolerance’ (2025) 26 International Journal of Molecular Science 5274

University of Leeds, ‘Data-driven farming for smarter, more sustainable agriculture: case study’ < https://www.leeds.ac.uk/research-and-innovation/dir-record/profiles/19836/data-driven-farming-for-smarter-more-sustainable-agriculture>

University of Leeds, ‘Global Food and Environment Institute’ < https://www.leeds.ac.uk/global-food-environment-institute>

University of Leeds, ‘Intellectual Property LLM: course details and modules’ < https://courses.leeds.ac.uk/f379/intellectual-property-law-llm#content>

University of Leeds, ‘Smart Farm’ <https://www.leeds.ac.uk/global-food-environment-institute/doc/gfei-smart-farm>

University of Sheffield, ‘Controlled Environment Agriculture’ < https://sheffield.ac.uk/sustainable-food/research/controlled-environment-agriculture>

UNCTAD, ‘The role of science, technology and innovation in ensuring food security by 2030’ (United Nations, 2017) <https://unctad.org/system/files/official-document/dtlstict2017d5_en.pdf>

UKRI, ‘NI NERC-FAPESP: COSMIC-SWAMP, IoT Enabled Cosmic Ray Sensors for Irrigation Monitoring’ < https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FW004364%2F1#/tabOverview>

USDA – Agricultural Marketing Service, ‘GIAC Cyber Security Discussion Paper’ (2024) <https://www.ams.usda.gov/about-ams/giac-may-2024-meeting/cybersecurity>

US Government Accountability Office, ‘Benefits and Challenges for Technology Adoption and Use’ (January 2024) <https://www.gao.gov/assets/d24105962.pdf>

Zscheischler J, Brunsch R, Rogga S and others, ‘Perceived risks and vulnerabilities of employing digitalization and digital data in agriculture – Socially robust orientations from a transdisciplinary process’ (2022) 358 Journal of Cleaner Production 132034

[1] FAO, IFAD, and WFP, ‘The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2015: Meeting the 2015 International Hunger Targets—Taking Stock of Uneven Progress’ (2015)

[3] Irene Gujit and others, ‘Hidden Harvest: The value of wild resources in agricultural systems - A Project Summary’ (ILED 1995). Available at <https://www.iied.org/6135iied>.

[4] Cindy E Morris and David C Sands, ‘The Breeder’s Dilemma: Yield or Nutrition?’ (2006) 24(9) Nature Biotechnology 1078.

[5] Global Panel, ‘Food Systems and Diets: Facing the Challenges of the 21st Century’ (2016).

[7] Including the many populations who continue to combine cultivation with hunting and gathering.

[8] Chris Cunningham and Monica Mercury, ‘Coproducing Health Research with Indigenous Peoples’ (2023) 29 Nature Medicine 2722.

[9] Kamalesh Adhikari and others, ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Should Be Recognized and Strengthened to Boost Food Innovation Research’ (2024) 5 Nature Food 802.

[11] Altieri, MA, Agroecology: a new research and development paradigm for world agriculture. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, 27, 37-46, 1989; Nicholls, CI and MA Altieri, Pathways for the amplification of agroecology.” Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems 42(10), 1170-1193, 2018

[12] RRB Leakey, RRB, Agroforestry: participatory domestication of trees, in N Van Alfen (ed.), Encyclopedia of Agriculture and Food Systems, Vol. 1. Elsevier, 2014, 253-269.

[13] Vazquez-Delfina, P, Casas, A, Vallejo, M. Adaptation and biocultural conservation of traditional agroforestry systems in the Tehuacán Valley: access to resources and livelihoods strategies, Heliyon 8, 2022; S Viswanath and PA Lubina, “Traditional agroforestry systems”, in JC Dagar and VP Tewari (eds) Agroforestry: Anecdotal to Modern Science. Springer, 91-119, 2017.

[14] Glenn D Stone, The Agricultural Dilemma: How Not to Feed the World (Routledge 2022).

[15] For an overview on precision agriculture, see Precision Agriculture: US Government Accountability Office, ‘Benefits and Challenges for Technology Adoption and Use’ (January 2024) <https://www.gao.gov/assets/d24105962.pdf>; for a focus on AI, see Dhananjay K Pandey and Richa Mishra, ‘Towards sustainable agriculture: Harnessing AI for global food security’ (2024) 12 Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture 72

[16] UNCTAD, ‘The role of science, technology and innovation in ensuring food security by 2030’ (United Nations, 2017) 21-25. See also, Francesca Cecchinato and others, ‘The Role of Innovative Technologies in Sustainability’ in Maria C Annosi and others (eds) Sustainability in Agribusiness: The Impact of Societal Challenges, Technological Advancements, and Development Goals (Routledge 2022); Ali Ahmad and others, ‘AI can empower agriculture for global food security: challenges and prospects in developing nations’ (2024) 7 Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence 1.

[17] Ishak Pakal and others, ‘A systematic review of deep learning techniques for plant diseases’ (2024) 57 Artificial Intelligence Review 304.

[18] UNCTAD, ‘The role of science, technology and innovation in ensuring food security by 2030’ (n 16) 22.

[19] For an example of a pioneering company, see Ecorobotix < https://ecorobotix.com>.

[20] For a discussion in the EU context, see European Commission – Agriculture and Rural Development, ‘EU Agri-Digital Conference’ (12 December 2024) <https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/eu-agri-food-days/day-3-eu-agri-digital-conference_en>.

[21] The seminal article that described this technique is: Martin Jinek and others, ‘A Programmable Dual-RNA-Guided DNA Endonuclease in Adaptive Bacterial Immunity’ (2012) 337(6096) Science 816.

[22] For an introduction to this technique applied to agriculture, see Heba I Mohamed and others, ‘CRISPR‑Cas9 System Mediated Genome Editing Technology: An Ultimate Tool to Enhance Abiotic Stress in Crop Plants’ (2024) 24 Journal of Soil Science and Plant Nutrition 1799.

[23] FAO, ‘Achieving SDG2 without breaching the 1.5C threshold: a Global Roadmap’ (10 December 2023) <https://openknowledge.fao.org/items/b86cd543-e8ca-4e95-b5d2-06ea6af23842>.

[24] On this integrated approach specifically, see Guotian Li and others, ‘Integrated biotechnological and AI innovations for crop improvement’ (2025) 643 Nature 925.

[25] Several scholarly papers have recently tackled this topic. Among the others, see Othman M Al-Dossary, ‘Genome Editing: An Approach to Engineer Crops to Withstand Climate Change and Sustain Food Security’ in Jameel M Al-Khayri and others (eds), Handbook of Agricultural Technologies (Springer 2025) <https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0862-2_28-1>; Naglaa A Abdallah, ‘Breeding Plants Resilient to Climate Change’ in Magdy T Khalil, Wiame WM Emam, Abdelazim Negm (eds), Climate Changes Impacts on Aquatic Environment: Assessment, Adaptation, Mitigation, and Road Map for Sustainable Development (Springer 2025); Prabhjot Singh Jassal and Jeziel Salzano R Marak, ‘Harnessing Biotechnology for Climate-Resilient for Crop Innovations’ in Rajni Rajan, Faheem Ahmad, Kuldeep Pandey (eds), Innovations in Climate Resilient Agriculture (Springer 2025); Huaijun Tang and others, ‘Resilience of Maize to Environmental Stress: Insights into Drought and Heat Tolerance’ (2025) 26 International Journal of Molecular Science 5274.

[26] James C Scott, Seeing Life a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (Yale University Press1998); J Stephen Lansing, Priests and Programmers: Technologies of Power in the Engineered Landscape of Bali (Princeton University Press 1991).

[27] Indeed, recent economic research confirms that ‘peripheries’ are indeed drivers for original innovations, conceptually and practically distinct from that produced in urban areas or large innovation poles. See, Carolina Castaldi and others, ‘Out of sight? Revealing creativity-led innovation in rural regions’ (Utrecht University, Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography no 25.17) < http://econ.geo.uu.nl/peeg/peeg2517.pdf>.

[28] Susan H Bagdon and Chelsea Smith, ’Small-Scale Farmer Innovation Systems: A Review of the Current Literature’. (Quaker United Nations Office 2015) <https://quno.org/sites/default/files/resources/SSF%20Innovation%20Systems%20-%20Literature%20Review.pdf> ; Misereor, ‘Small-scale Farmer Innovation: How Agricultural Research Works Together with Farmers’ (2016) <https://www.misereor.org/fileadmin/user_upload_misereororg/publication/en/foodsecurity/dossier-small-scale-farmer-innovation-2016.pdf > . See also Stone (n 11).

[30] See, USDA – Agricultural Marketing Service, ‘GIAC Cyber Security Discussion Paper’ (2024) <https://www.ams.usda.gov/about-ams/giac-may-2024-meeting/cybersecurity>. The sources quoted in this paper are also useful for the present analysis.

[32] Cyber Management Alliance, ‘Peter Green Chilled Cyber Incident: UK Retail Under Attack Again’ (21 May 2025) < https://www.cm-alliance.com/cybersecurity-blog/peter-green-chilled-cyber-incident-uk-retail-under-attack-again>.

[33] Alex Scroxton, ‘Blue Yonder ransomware attack breaks systems at UK retailers’ (ComputerWeekly.Com, 26 November 2024) < https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366616406/Blue-Yonder-ransomware-attack-breaks-systems-at-UK-retailers>.

[34] Mehdi Hazrati and others, ‘On-Farm Data Security: Practical Recommendations for Securing Farm Data’ (2022) 6 Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 1.

[35] For an interesting study focused on Germany, see Franz Kuntke and others, ‘Resilience in Agriculture: Communication and Energy Infrastructure Dependencies of German Farmers’ (2022) 13 International Journal of Disaster Risk Science 214.

[36] Jana Zscheischler and others, ‘Perceived risks and vulnerabilities of employing digitalization and digital data in agriculture – Socially robust orientations from a transdisciplinary process’ (2022) 358 Journal of Cleaner Production 132034.

[37] University of Leeds, ‘Intellectual Property LLM: course details and modules’ < https://courses.leeds.ac.uk/f379/intellectual-property-law-llm#content>.

[38] Interdisciplinary Food Systems Teaching and Learning (IFSTAL) < https://www.ifstal.ac.uk>.

[39] QS Top Universities, ‘QS World University Rankings by Subject 2025: Agriculture & Forestry’ < https://www.topuniversities.com/university-subject-rankings/agriculture-forestry?countries=gb>.

[41] Agricultural Universities Council UK, ‘Research Strategy 2023’, 14 < https://rau.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/16756/1/AUC%20Research%20strategy%202023%20report.pdf>.

[42] University of Leeds, ‘Global Food and Environment Institute’ < https://www.leeds.ac.uk/global-food-environment-institute>.

[43] University of Leeds, ‘Smart Farm’ <https://www.leeds.ac.uk/global-food-environment-institute/doc/gfei-smart-farm>.

[44] University of Leeds, ‘Data-driven farming for smarter, more sustainable agriculture: case study’ < https://www.leeds.ac.uk/research-and-innovation/dir-record/profiles/19836/data-driven-farming-for-smarter-more-sustainable-agriculture>.

[45] UKRI, ‘NI NERC-FAPESP: COSMIC-SWAMP, IoT Enabled Cosmic Ray Sensors for Irrigation Monitoring’ < https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FW004364%2F1#/tabOverview>.

[46] University of Sheffield, ‘Controlled Environment Agriculture’ < https://sheffield.ac.uk/sustainable-food/research/controlled-environment-agriculture>.

Written evidence submitted by the Technology, Governance and Intellectual Property Research Group, University of Leeds (IGF0046)

Table of Contents

Executive Summary