On November 28, the Agri-Tech Centres will take part in the exciting New Scientist Live 2020 one-day event on ‘The Future of Food and Agriculture’, talking about the role of science and technology in producing what we eat.

At a time when global events are placing increasing pressure on food production and supply chains, the four UK Agri-Tech Centres are working with farmers across the UK to support greater efficiency, resilience and profitability. They support the development, evaluation and delivery of technology and data-driven solutions to the challenges faced by the farming industry. Their reach extends across all key industry players – science, business and government – and they provide a shared voice to inform and influence industry priorities and highlight important issues.

Agri-EPI and its fellow UK Agri-Tech Centres CHAP and CIEL will be running a host of engaging talks, with opportunities for the audience to ‘ask the experts’ about the role and impact of new technologies and techniques supporting sustainable food.

Agri-EPI will be running a live, 30-minute session from 2.30pm titled ‘Tech to Feed the World’. This will take viewers on a whistle stop tour of three of the newest and most exciting technologies involved in producing our food and getting it onto our plates.

The featured innovations, and the exerts behind them, are ‘SlugBot’, an amazing technology that helps reduce farmers’ need for pesticides by controlling crop-munching critters; Crover, a very clever robot that can ‘swim’ through grain stores to monitor conditions; and the new ‘wonder’ technology ‘cold plasma’ which has a multitude of surprising uses in farming and the food supply chain.

The Agri-Tech Centres will also be hosting virtual exhibition stand, with a packed programme of films, Q&As and resources accessible to visitors throughout the day.

Future of Food and Agriculture

New Scientist Live’s Future of Food and Agriculture is an online event for everyone who cares what’s on their plate. Hear how science and technology is making it happen in a day of inspiring talks, demos and interactive sessions at this awesome one-day virtual event.

Event topics:

• Personalised nutrition
• How our other senses alter our taste
• Robot farming
• Lab-grown meat
• What to eat to save the planet
• Gene editing
• Climate change and farming

Speaker line-up:

• Farmers creating robots to plant, cultivate and harvest crops;
• Neil Stephens, the sociologist who studies the potential impact of lab-grown meat;
• Mark Lynas, the GM activist-turned-advocate;
• Tilly Collins, the entomologist, making the case for adding edible insects to our diets; the scientists transforming crops and livestock with gene-editing;
• Tim Spector, the microbiome expert overturning everything we know about diets; the psychologist making food taste better by hacking your senses;