Biodiversity

Image: Getty/Maki Nakamura

WATCH: Microsoft and Syngenta discuss the impact of AI in ag

By Oliver Morrison

GenAI and AI platforms continue to develop at a fast pace, experts from Microsoft and Syngenta Group told the recent World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit in London. But ‘humans in the loop’ are needed to develop dependable frameworks for validating recommendations...

Image: US company Terviva transforms pongamia beans into food ingredients, animal feed and bioenergy. Image: Getty/Subas chandra Mahato

Plans to turn pongamia oil into biofuel move up a gear

By Oliver Morrison

Terviva, the company aiming to plant 200 million pongamia trees over 10 years for food, feed and fuel, has received investment from Chevron Renewable Energy Group, as mining giant Rio Tinto also looks to pongamia as a feedstock for renewable diesel production.

A webspinner on a sugarcane leaf. Image: Getty/Apurv Jadhav

Global partnership aims to develop pest-resistant sugarcane

By Oliver Morrison

PlantArcBio, an Israeli company specialising in gene discovery and biological components to enhance agricultural crop traits, has announced a global research and development collaboration with Brazilian sugarcane company Centro de Tecnologia Canavieria...

Image: Getty/pixelfusion3d

Innovation Insider Country profile

India: Are the bets back on?

By Harry Holmes

After the crisis in funding in 2023, India’s agtech landscape is adjusting. But can investment be directed to the right places? Harry Holmes investigates.

Image: Sainsbury’s has launched a new agroforestry initiative to enhance biodiversity and promote sustainable agricultural practices and responsible sourcing in its supply chain

Sainsbury’s embraces agroforestry to cut carbon emissions

By Oliver Morrison

With only an estimated 3.3% of the UK’s farmed area currently practicing agroforestry, the supermarket has launched a new agroforestry initiative aiming to boost agroforestry adoption and help farmers integrate trees effectively while maintaining other...

Image: Nespresso

What’s behind Nespresso's regen ag honey launch?

By Oliver Morrison

The Nestle-subsidiary has just unveiled its first ever honey products in the US in a move that illustrates the key potential benefits of regenerative agriculture for FMCGs: premium taste and supply chain sustainability.

Image: Halter

Virtual fencing tech: smart solution or just shocking?

By Oliver Morrison

Halter’s virtual fencing technology has just launched in the US, where it insists it can help the beef and dairy industries become more productive and more sustainable. And despite concerns from some – but not all – welfare groups, the company’s system...

Image: Getty/luoman

Sustainability report card

NGOs push Bunge for stronger measures on deforestation

By Maria Fortunato

Agribusiness giant Bunge has announced progress towards eliminating deforestation from its supply chains by 2025 in its 2024 Global Sustainability Report. But critics remain unconvinced.

Image: Getty/Natali_Mis

Will the new UK government embrace gene-edited food?

By Oliver Morrison

Plant scientists in the UK are demanding clarity from the new government to unlock the potential economic and environmental benefits of new precision breeding techniques such as gene editing.

Image: Getty/Igor Alecsander

Regen ag: Undefined and unable to feed the planet?

By Oliver Morrison

Yes, its broad principles offer a promising path towards sustainable nutrition and food security for the future. But without a standard definition regen ag risks becoming a soon-disregarded fad, it has been warned.

Purple bacteria are found in a variety of shallow environments such as estuaries, salt marshes and hypersaline salterns. Image: Getty/wallix

The next source of eco-friendly fertiliser: purple bacteria?

By Oliver Morrison

Biomass made from a species of purple bacteria typically found in marine sediments, seawater pools and mud flats is an ‘excellent nitrogen fertiliser’, according to research published in the journal Sustainable Agriculture.

India is the world’s second largest rice producer, but the country faces significant threats to the livelihoods of rice farmers from the effects of climate change. Image: Getty/Umesh Negi

The new projects aimed at transforming rice farming in South Asia

By Oliver Morrison

Mitti Labs, a tech-enabled project developer focused on sustainable agriculture, specifically in the rice farming sector, has unveiled five rice projects in India to reduce methane emissions, increase water security and build farmer resilience.

Eco-labels make good sense, but working in isolation they won't save the planet from the climate crisis. GettyImages/zoranm

Why eco-labelling won’t save the planet

By Flora Southey

Not even the innovators themselves are backing on-pack carbon footprint labelling to save the planet from rising global temperatures. Here's why.

Image: Getty/Nikada

Why financing smallholder farmers matters... experts discuss

By Maria Fortunato

Agtech solutions must address financing for smallholder farmers, together with scope 3 emissions, and inequity across multiple sectors of the industry in order to meet sustainability goals. This was the consensus among panellists at a recent webinar co-hosted...

Image: Getty/Richard Drury

VC investment

Agtech's ‘great reset’ continues, data reveals

By Oliver Morrison

PitchBook’s latest Q1 2024 Agtech Report indicates a market undergoing a correction, with the wheat being separated from the chaff. Some sectors are hotter than others, meanwhile.

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