Is UK agri-tech funding enough for a hotter, drier future?

The UK is investing significant amounts of grant funding via programs like ADOPT and the Farming Innovation Programme to help farmers, growers and foresters increase resilience, but not yet in a way that matches the speed, scale and continuity of the climate risk.

July 2026 was not simply another dry month. England and Wales recorded the driest July on record. England received just 6.5mm of rainfall, equivalent to 10% of its long-term average, while southern England experienced its driest July since 1836.

By 10 August, 70% of England was in drought. Around 45 million people were living in drought areas and more than 27 million were subject to restrictions on water use. Reservoir storage had fallen to 69%, while more than 1,500 restrictions were affecting licences used to take water from rivers and other sources.

The impact is already visible on farms. The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board’s first harvest report of 2026 estimated average wheat yields of 6.8 tonnes per hectare, down from a10-year average of 7.9 tonnes, providing a clear indication of the pressure created by limited rainfall.

This summer is therefore more than a weather story. This demonstrates the need for innovation funding to develop ideas that can help agriculture adapt to drought, heat stress and water shortages that are becoming the new norm operating conditions.

Public investment is increasing to help farmers, growers and foresters become more resilient

The government is driving agricultural innovation, offering a number of innovation grants and schemes with the aim of boosting agri-tech research and development.

The Farming Innovation Programme received an additional £53 million in June, taking total funding for farming research and technology to £123 million in the 2026/27 financial year. Current opportunities include on-farm trials via ADOPT grants of between £50,000 and £200,000, feasibility projects worth between £200,000 and £500,000, and small R&D projects with eligible costs of between £1 million and £3 million. The government has also committed to investing at least £200 million in agricultural innovation by 2030.

There are credible examples of this support moving technology forward.

Fieldwork Robotics is using government funding to improve the reliability of its raspberry-harvesting robot and prepare it for commercial deployment. Precision Plants Ltd has received £912,259 across its project partnership to develop climate-resilient hemp varieties that can grow on less productive land. Other funded projects are working on biological fertilisers, precision breeding, crop monitoring and more efficient use of agricultural inputs.

Previous programmes also show that public investment can work. UKRI’s evaluation of the Transforming Food Production programme which invested £70 million across 92 projects from 2019-2024 ,found strong evidence that the programme accelerated technologies at a pace that would not have been achieved without public support.

The question for government funding, therefore, is not simply whether enough money is available for agricultural R&D. It is whether the funding system is helping promising solutions move quickly enough from development and testing into practical use on farms, so that agriculture can adapt to a climate where managing too much water and too little water may increasingly be part of the same challenge.

Britain does not have an invention problem

The UK has a substantial agri-tech pipeline.

Beauhurst data shows, the country has 250 active agri-tech companies, up from 52 in late 2015. These businesses raised £367 million in equity during 2025, the highest annual total recorded for the sector.

However, those headline figures do not mean capital is readily available. The five highest-funded companies account for 57% of all equity raised by the sector. Most of the top 100 businesses remain at seed or venture stage, reflecting the long commercialisation timelines associated with crop science, agricultural hardware and farming infrastructure.

This reflects what we hear from some agri-tech businesses we work with. Funding opportunities exist, but they do not always match the cost, timing or risk involved in proving a product, validating it across different farms and seasons, and building a commercial operation around it.

This is consistent with UKRI’s own evaluation. The Transforming Food Production report found that most supported organisations would require further funding to commercialise their technologies. It also identified finance, awareness, capability and a fragmented support landscape are barriers to adoption.

Britain does not have a shortage of ideas. It has a funding and investment continuity problem between research and scale-up for widespread adoption.

Climate resilience needs to become a funding mission

There is also a question of priorities and timing.

The £20 million Farming Futures competition announced in August is primarily focused on robotics, automation and labour shortages. These are important problems.

The next question is whether future funding rounds will give enough weight to water resilience. With hotter, drier summers expected alongside wetter winters and more intense rainfall, farms will need technologies that help them capture, store and use water more effectively across the year.

Robotics and climate resilience are not competing priorities. Increasingly, they are part of the same challenge: helping farms operate more efficiently in a more volatile climate while building technologies the UK can scale and export

The focus on robotics and automation should not be seen as separate from climate resilience. These technologies can help farms use labour, water, energy and other inputs more efficiently, while also supporting the UK’s wider ambition to build a globally competitive agri-tech and advanced manufacturing sector.

A stronger programme does not necessarily need a broader remit. Water-efficient irrigation, on-farm storage, soil-moisture monitoring, drought-resilient crops and other resilience technologies are already within the scope of the Farming Innovation Programme.
The bigger question is whether enough support exists to take the strongest of these ideas through development, on-farm validation and wider deployment. In practice, resilience will depend less on adding new themes to the programme and more on giving proven technologies a clearer route from funded R&D into commercial use across the sector.

Is the current level of funding enough?

The Farming Innovation Programme is already a significant source of support for agricultural R&D, covering everything from feasibility studies and collaborative projects to farmer-led trials and late-stage innovation. The bigger question is what happens once a technology has proved that it works.

Agri-tech companies still need capital to refine products, scale manufacturing, build commercial teams and support wider deployment. Farmers, meanwhile, need a realistic way to adopt new technologies without carrying all of the cost and risk themselves.

But the scale of the climate challenge is larger. A recent Met Office synthesis report estimated that UK agriculture is already losing around £1 billion a year to extreme weather. That is not a like-for-like comparison with innovation funding, which is intended to stimulate solutions rather than compensate businesses for losses. It does, however, illustrate the scale of the risk being addressed.

More money is only part of the answer. What matters is patient, joined-up funding that continues beyond the first successful trial and helps proven technology reach a commercially realistic price.

The Met Office expects the UK to experience hotter, drier summers and more frequent extreme weather. Agricultural innovation can help reduce the impact of a changing climate, and the Farming Innovation Programme is designed to support exactly that by helping farmers and agri-tech businesses develop more productive, sustainable and resilient ways of working.

The test for the future should be how many useful technologies reached farms, how quickly they were adopted and whether they helped British agriculture keep producing through the next dry summer.

Developing technology for a more resilient farming sector?

We can help you assess which grant and R&D funding routes may be realistic for your project, then build a clear, evidence-led case around the technology, commercial plan and expected impact.

Speak to the team