As climate challenges intensify amid corporate net zero targets and consumer pressure, post-Brexit UK has the ability to provide innovative legislative solutions and influence more accommodative policy from Brussels.
So suggests Neil Key, BASF's vice president, EMEA West.
Speaking to AgTechNavigator at the sidelines of the recent World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit in the UK, he noted a host of “fantastic innovations” available in the market – ranging from fertilisation, digitalisation tools, crop protection, seeds traits and biologicals – that have the potential to tackle the effects of climate change and help companies meet their net zero targets.
But regulation in Europe especially needs to improve, he said. "We need to be quicker. We need to have a stronger view on how we adopt and incentivise innovation.”
The UK, by virtue of no longer being in the EU, is in a position to bring innovation to the market quicker than Brussels, he added.
Watch: BASF on innovation, regulation and collaboration
By way of example, the UK’s Food Security and Rural Affairs Minister Daniel Zeichner attended to the summit to announce the next steps toward implementing the Precision Breeding Act, which aims to harness the benefits of gene editing technology in England.
While EU regulation holds back areas of ag innovation, the UK can theoretically become "the perfect lighthouse" to drive innovation policy in the EU, suggested Kay.
In other example, he pointed out that BASF’s grassweed herbicide product was approved in the UK three years before the EU.
Global agriculture, he added, is a progressive industry. “The people who work in it are dynamic and they will adopt innovation if they are given the right platform to do that."
The need for collaboration on data
Data is essential for the agtech industry as it drives efficiency, informs decision-making, addresses global challenges, and spurs innovation.
At the event, however, questions were raised on the issue of whether farmers can trust ‘big ag’ with their data and allow companies to access and use it.
Key called for a collaborative approach to bring trust and transparency across the value chain.
“We need to come together within a partnership to understand that data,” he said. “If we don't come together it will slow us down. We have to find a way to work together with the right policy and to protect the different elements of that value chain so that there's consistency with thw data and that the rewards are balanced in an appropriate way to support growers and the other areas of the market."
The data, he said, should be put with experts within government, within the value chain, within r&d companies ans growers to make scientific based decisons that are progressive and ultimately these should be verified and certified.
