Agri-tech in the UK: industry profile

Broadly defined, agri-tech (agricultural technology) is the application of advanced technologies — such as data analytics, robotics, and biotechnology — to improve the efficiency, sustainability, and profitability of farming and primary food production. It broadly corresponds to the upstream end of the wider AgriFoodTech sector. 

Its importance has increased in recent years, as food producers have faced growing pressure to raise output whilst using fewer resources, reducing emissions, and improving resilience to climate change, labour shortages, market volatility and input-cost pressures.

In UK policy, agri-tech is now closely linked to wider goals around food security, productivity and net zero. As a result, it has received significant public funding, with Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme having committed over £165m to date.

Notably, the government’s Advanced Manufacturing Sector Plan designates agri-tech as one of six UK frontier industries, with priority areas including robotics, automation, advanced sensors, AI, IoT-enabled farming systems, controlled-environment agriculture and engineering biology.

Recent performance points to a sector with significant underlying momentum. As of April 2026, Beauhurst, which operates a searchable database of the UK’s fastest-growing companies, was tracking 250 active UK agri-tech companies (up from 52 in late 2015), with these companies together having raised £1.64bn in equity funding, including a record £367m in 2025.

However, adoption and commercialisation remain central challenges. As the Innovation and Research Caucus has noted, the UK has strong research and innovation assets, but translating these into scalable, marketable farmer-facing products remains a key test for many businesses in the industry. Below, we outline some of the key issues at play in this regard.

At a high level, the UK’s agri-tech industry may be divided into six main segments, which are outlined below. It should be noted, however, that some companies operate across more than one segment, and that segments sometimes intersect in practice (for example, robotics plus sensing, or biologicals plus data-driven trialling).

This segment comprises hardware and data services that allow farms, crops, livestock and landscapes to be observed in near real time.

It includes soil and weather sensors, livestock monitors, drones, satellite imagery, GPS guidance, and crop mapping services.

Its commercial role is to turn physical farm conditions into usable digital signals, supporting precision input use, early warning of crop stress and better land-management decisions. According to a recent UK Agri-Tech Centre report, hyperspectral and sensor-based technologies could support 10–30% input savings.

This segment covers the software layer that integrates farm, environmental, supply-chain and remote-sensing data into decision-support tools.

It includes farm management software, AI analytics, predictive models, image interpretation, yield forecasting and biodiversity measurement platforms.

This segment comprises machinery (often autonomous or semi-autonomous) used to carry out farm operations more precisely, safely or with less labour.

It includes robotic weeders, harvesters and crop scouts, automated milking and feeding systems, and precision machinery for variable-rate application.

Such technologies are often framed as a response to labour constraints and input-cost pressures. According to the UK Agri-Tech Centre, automation could deliver long-term labour cost savings of more than 40% in labour-intensive crops.

This segment covers products and services that utilise biology, genetics, microbiology or biochemical processes to improve crop and livestock health, productivity, resilience or sustainability.

It includes precision breeding, plant and animal genetics, diagnostics, vaccines, biopesticides, biostimulants, and soil or animal microbiome technologies.

To take one real-world example, gene-editing has produced PRRS-resistant pigs, with potentially significant benefits for pig health, productivity and biosecurity.

This segment includes vertical farming, glasshouses, growth chambers, aquaculture and other systems in which light, temperature, nutrients, water and biosecurity can be closely controlled.

Its appeal comes down to resource efficiency, consistency and year-round output, particularly for high-value crops and propagules.

According to the UK Agri-Tech Centre, controlled environment agriculture (CEA) could contribute an additional £300m in UK fruit and vegetable production, helping to strengthen food security and sector resilience to global challenges.

This segment cuts across the rest of the market, covering technologies that help farms use fewer inputs, adapt to climate risk and measure environmental outcomes.

It includes carbon calculators and measurement, soil and biodiversity monitoring, water-management tools, methane-reduction technologies, nutrient-efficiency systems, climate-risk analytics and MRV for natural-capital markets.

Demand for such technologies is likely to grow as farmers, food companies and investors require more robust evidence on emissions, soil health, biodiversity and ecosystem-service credits.

There is a clear appetite for innovation among many farmers: 60% of respondents to a 2025 Barclays survey stated that they were looking to embrace new technologies or farming techniques. However, across much of the agri-tech industry, adoption remains inhibited by persistent demand-side constraints, particularly around cost, connectivity and skills.

Recent farmer-engagement research from the UK Agri-Tech Centre identified cost as the leading obstacle, with 70% of surveyed farmers citing it as the main barrier to uptake. High purchase and implementation costs are particularly problematic in the current farming environment, where profitability and investment confidence are under pressure. 43% of respondents to the NFU’s 2025 confidence survey expected to reduce investment.

Connectivity is another structural constraint. The NFU’s 2025 digital access survey found that 21% of respondents had broadband speeds below 10 Mbps, only 22% had reliable mobile signal across their entire farm, nearly one in ten had no 4G or 5G access, and only 33% had fibre broadband. Clearly, this may limit the practical use of technologies such as cloud platforms, remote sensors, automated machinery, and environmental reporting tools.

Skills are are also an issue: farmers report difficulties accessing the skills needed to deploy and operate new technologies. Businesses seeking to improve adoption rates may wish to provide practical demonstrations and workshops to help farmers understand how technologies work in real-world conditions.

For its part, the government is seeking to encourage adoption through grant schemes such as the Farming Equipment and Technology Fund, as well as investing in rural connectivity via Project Gigabit, the Shared Rural Network and 5G Innovation Regions.

Some prominent commentators, such as the Innovation and Research Caucus, have framed the UK agri-tech industry as one which possesses world-leading research strengths, but which often struggles to translate innovation into scalable, practical, and trusted products that deliver measurable value on-farm.

For many businesses, therefore, the central challenge is not technical feasibility alone, but the ability to demonstrate interoperability and a clear return-on-investment (ROI). Farmers need confidence that a technology will work within their existing systems, exchange data effectively with other tools and platforms, and deliver benefits that outweigh the costs of adoption. Here, on-farm trials, independently validated performance data, adviser endorsement and practical examples are likely to carry more weight than marketing claims alone.

One recent Agritech Future article emphasises that successful agri-tech must be designed around actual farm workflows, with low friction for users and clear operational benefits.

Initiatives such as Defra's ADOPT, with its emphasis on farmer-led trials under real operating conditions, aim to help to close the gap between innovation and uptake by generating practical evidence of both performance and ROI.

Limited access to finance remains a significant constraint for UK agri-tech — particularly for businesses seeking to scale up their operations.

AgFunder data indicate that overall global AgriFoodTech funding fell 4% year-on-year in 2024, with upstream investment — the areas closest to farm production — down 22%. In the UK specifically, the fall in upstream funding was even more severe: down 43% compared to 2023.

Analysis by BCG/Rentenbank suggests that investor appetite is held back by the sector’s high R&D costs, regulatory complexity, fragmented customer base and uncertain scalability. This creates a particular challenge for technologies that may be attractive to farmers but are harder to commercialise at pace.

In this context, the government is seeking to use public funding to 'crowd in' private capital. Programmes such as the Farming Innovation Investor Partnership and AgriScale point to a policy emphasis on late-stage validation and manufacturing scale-up. However, some businesses report that grant processes and match-funding requirements can be onerous.

Firms able to present robust trial evidence, unit economics and credible deployment routes are likely to be better positioned in the current funding environment than those whose investment case rests mainly on projected scalability that has yet to be evidenced.

At present, UK agri-tech businesses are operating in a regulatory environment that is increasingly supportive in certain respects, but remains fragmented across technologies, jurisdictions and commercial use cases.

Here, precision breeding is a case in point. Under the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 and 2025 regulations, England now has a clearer, more proportionate statutory route for qualifying precision-bred plants, allowing release and marketing through Defra notification, confirmation and public-register processes, while food and feed products remain subject to FSA authorisation under a tiered safety-assessment framework. This should reduce friction for some gene-edited crop innovation and strengthen the investability of crop science, trait development and enabling technologies. Public funding is already supporting precision-breeding projects in areas such as disease resistance, climate resilience and novel crops.

However, the framework remains partial. No precision-bred crop or animal has yet been authorised for sale as food or feed in the UK, and animals are not yet within the operational release and marketing regime. The regime described above is also England-only: in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, precision-bred organisms continue to be treated as GMOs, creating cross-border uncertainty for developers, producers and supply chains.

Robotics, automation and precision machinery face similar regulatory complexity, with autonomous and AI-enabled systems cutting across multiple regulatory domains: machinery safety, workplace health and safety, aviation, pesticide application, data governance, liability, and so on. Because many existing frameworks were designed for conventional machinery, recent HSE and Regulatory Horizons Council work has called for clearer guidance, liability rules, sector-specific standards and potential regulatory sandboxes.

As well as being important to domestic productivity and food-security, the UK's agri-tech industry is also well placed to address global demand for more efficient, resilient and lower-emission food production. OECD-FAO forecasts point to continued growth in agricultural and fish output over the next decade, much of it driven by productivity gains and technology adoption. This creates potential export markets for UK businesses in areas such as precision agriculture, livestock and crop genetics, decision-support software, robotics, sensing and resource-efficiency technologies.

This international opportunity is increasingly reflected in public and sector-led support. The UK Agri-Tech Centre’s Global Growth Accelerator, for example, is designed to help UK agri-tech firms validate their technologies with overseas end-users, build local partnerships and open commercial pathways. Its 2026–27 Australasia programme focuses on dairy and livestock technologies in New Zealand's farming systems, offering access to early-adopter farms, farmer feedback, third-party validation and in-market engagement.

Government-backed activity is also supporting internationalisation. Defra’s agri-food attaché network works with industry partners to showcase British innovation overseas, whilst Innovate UK is delivering initiatives such as the Global Business Innovation Programme to help SMEs test market fit, understand regulation, develop partnerships and improve investor readiness.

For many businesses, however, overseas expansion will need to be selective and strategic, focused on markets that align with their technology, evidence base and commercial capacity.

The tax treatment of the UK agri-tech industry is complex, and a full explication of its nuances is beyond the scope of this profile.

That said, given that many agri-tech businesses are R&D-, IP- and capital-intensive, the following elements of the UK tax system are likely to be of particular interest:

• Research & Development (R&D) tax relief — relevant for companies working to deliver scientific and technological advances in fields such as crop and animal technologies, biological inputs, sensing systems, robotics, and so on.
• Patent Box — allowing profits attributable to qualifying patented inventions, including certain botanic innovation rights, to be taxed at a reduced corporation tax rate of 10%.
• Capital allowances and full expensing — providing relief on qualifying plant and machinery, these may be relevant to trial facilities, laboratory equipment, glasshouse systems, manufacturing assets, and so on.
• SEIS and EIS — venture capital tax reliefs designed to support early-stage and growth companies. The UK Agri-Tech Centre has highlighted their importance in attracting early-stage investment into high-risk, IP-intensive agri-tech businesses such as LettUs Grow.
• Place-based incentives — Freeports and Investment Zones may be relevant for agri-tech businesses making location-specific investments in fields such as robotics manufacturing, controlled-environment agriculture, or biological-input production.
• Employee share schemes — tax-advantaged share option schemes, particularly Enterprise Management Incentives (EMI), may help early-stage and scale-up agri-tech companies recruit and retain technical, commercial and scientific talent where cash remuneration is constrained.

The size and diversity of the UK agri-tech industry means that any list of notable players will not be fully representative or comprehensive.

That said, some examples of noteworthy players are set out below.

• AB Agri – large agri-food business active in animal nutrition, feed ingredients, technical services and data services for the agri-food supply chain.
• Agricarbon UK – provider of large-scale, automated measurement of soil carbon to support carbon accounting, natural-capital markets and regenerative agriculture.
• AgriSound – developer of acoustic sensing and data tools for monitoring pollinator and insect activity, supporting biodiversity measurement and crop-pollination management.
• Benchmark Holdings – aquaculture biotechnology business providing genetics, advanced nutrition and animal-health products to improve the productivity and sustainability of fish and shrimp farming.
• Breedr – livestock-management software company whose platform uses individual animal data to help cattle producers track performance, improve productivity and connect supply chains.
• Eden Research – AIM-listed business focused on sustainable biopesticides and plastic-free microencapsulation technologies for crop protection and related markets.
• Frontier Agriculture – major crop production and grain marketing business, with precision farming, digital tools and analytics capabilities.
• Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS) – Scottish-founded vertical-farming technology business designing industrial-scale controlled-environment systems for food and plant production.
• LettUs Grow – Bristol-based provider of advanced aeroponic irrigation systems for greenhouses and vertical farms.
• Phytoform Labs – crop-breeding technology company using AI and molecular biology to develop more resilient, productive and sustainable crops, including precision-bred varieties for controlled-environment production.
• RootWave – Warwickshire-based developer of electrical weeding technology, offering chemical-free weed control.
• Saga Robotics – developer of the Thorvald autonomous robot platform, used for tasks such as UV-C mildew control, crop data capture and farm automation in soft-fruit and vineyard systems.
• Trinity AgTech – developer of Sandy, a natural-capital software platform used to measure, manage and optimise farm-level carbon, biodiversity and water-quality performance.
• Tropic Biosciences – Norwich-based agricultural biotechnology company applying gene-editing technologies to develop disease-resistant and lower-waste crop varieties.

ICAEW’s Library & Information Service can provide information on UK and Irish participants in the agri-tech industry via its wide range of company information services. For more information, please contact our enquiry team on +44 (0)20 7920 8620 or at library@icaew.com to discuss your requirements.

• Agri-TechE
• Agricultural Engineers Association (AEA)
• Agricultural Industries Confederation (AIC)
• Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB)
• British Agricultural and Garden Machinery Association (BAGMA)
• British and Irish Society of Animal Science (BISAS)
• British Society of Plant Breeders (BSPB)
• Centre for Effective Innovation in Agriculture (CEIA)
• Commercial Horticultural Association (CHA)
• Country Land and Business Association (CLA)
• CropLife UK
• Institution of Agricultural Engineers (IAgrE)
• LEAF (Linking Environment And Farming)
• Royal Agricultural Society of England (RASE)
• Society of Agriculture (SocAg)
• UK Agri-Tech Centre
• UK Urban AgriTech (UKUAT)

• AgGateway
• Agricultural Industry Electronics Foundation (AEF)
• Association for Vertical Farming (AVF)
• CEMA – European Agricultural Machinery Association
• CropLife Europe
• CropLife International
• European Biostimulants Industry Council (EBIC)
• European Society of Agricultural Engineers (EurAgEng)
• Euroseeds
• FarmTech Society
• International Biocontrol Manufacturers Association (IBMA)
• International Commission of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering (CIGR)
• International Seed Federation (ISF)
• International Society for Horticultural Science (ISHS)
• International Society of Precision Agriculture (ISPA)