‘We’re feeding Silicon Valley’: UK looks to Dutch model to fix agri-tech scale gap

UK agri-tech leaders have warned Parliament that while the country excels in early-stage research, it struggles to scale innovations into commercial successes due to fragmented funding, limited access to patient capital, regulatory hurdles, and weak routes to market. Despite robust public R&D investment, the lack of coordination and conservative private funding are causing talent and intellectual property to flow overseas, leading to a "graveyard" of failed start-ups. MPs are now looking to the Dutch model, which features strong integration between government, academia, and industry, as a blueprint for reform. The sector’s future depends on whether the UK can streamline funding, attract patient investment, and build commercial-scale testbeds to bridge the gap from innovation to market.