Agri-tech: harvesting profits from the future of the food industry

The agricultural sector has long survived by throwing more pesticides, machines and land at every problem. That won’t work any more. Merryn Somerset Webb explores the agri-tech revolution.

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"I have two boys, ten and 13, and they won't have enough food to eat in a few years' time." So said a climate-change protestor to Richard Madeley on Good Morning Britain. Madeley looked mildly bemused. Probably for good reason. Right now, the planet has no shortage of food. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, around 10% of the world's population is malnourished in some way (though this figure has halved in the last 20 years). But that malnutrition, sadly, reflects more of a distribution problem than a production problem.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.