Agriculture in the UK is becoming a climate change laggard, having made almost no reduction in emissions in nearly a decade. With government reluctant to incentivise dietary changes away from emissions-intensive foods, can technology make the difference?

In 2022, then environment secretary George Eustice – responding to the Environmental Audit Committee over failures by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to progress its decarbonisation targets – sheepishly diverted to technology. He was “optimistic”, he said, about the role it would play in slashing agricultural emissions.

Eustice’s uneasiness before the committee betrayed his predicament. Agriculture contributes less than 1% to the UK economy, but is responsible for around 11% of the country’s total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This figure hasn’t budged much in the last decade. For this, it produces around three-quarters of domestic food consumption – and uses a whopping 71% of land, 21% of which will be...