Welcome to this new podcast series from Green Alliance, the charity and think tank that's all about achieving ambitious leadership for the environment.

I'm Amy Mount and today I'm bringing you the best bits from the first of three live debates, exploring the controversial questions about the future of land, our food and the environment.

In this episode, is technology a force for good in environmentally sustainable food production?

Or could it do more harm than good?

And what are the wider social and ethical implications?

Those are the big questions we put to an expert panel. We were lucky to be joined by the Professor of Robotics, Simon Blackmore,

Helen Browning, who runs the Soil Association, the campaigner and social scientist Robin Grove White,

and Alistair Cooper, an investor and organic farmer.

Our host for the event was Christine Taken, Groceries Code Adjudicator and Farming Businesswoman.

Over to her.

Good evening, everybody. I'm Christine Taken. I have quite a few roles today, but one of them is that I'm the

Groceries Code Adjudicator. Simon Blackmore, I introduce first, we both know each other from our

Harper-Adams. Then Alistair Cooper. Alistair is of ADM Capital, so he's an organic farmer,

but also knows a lot more about how we access money, because technology is one thing,

but how do we get the money to make it work?

Helen Browning from the Soil Association, and Robin Grove White, who I'm hoping is going to bring more of a social science dimension to the debate, which I think is worth thinking about.

So, Simon, can I hand over to you to start, please?

Thank you.

Thank you, Christy. Well, good

evening, everybody. My name is Professor Simon Blackmore from Harper-Adams University. I'm an

agriculture engineer. I've been interested in precision farming for about 30 years now. I am an engineer,

so I'm interested in the technology. I've been

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