Wide-ranging reform is urgently needed to modernise UK farming so it can capitalise on new technologies, safeguard the natural environment, and adapt to a changing climate, Environment Secretary Michael Gove has warned today.

In a speech to farmers this morning, the prominent Leave campaigner warned of "considerable turbulence" for the sector from a 'no-deal' Brexit scenario, which he said risked undermining the potential benefits from revamping UK agricultural policy outside the European Union.

Gove said the world was now on the cusp of a "Fourth Agricultural Revolution" prompted by technological advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, drones, machine learning, robotics, and lab-grown meat proteins, all of which he said opened up opportunities for greater efficiency and improved environmental sustainability across the farming industry.

Advances in agricultural technologies could help cut greenhouse gas emissions, pollution, and resource use, as well as boost soil resilience, safeguard against flood risk, enhance climate adaptation, ensure long-term food security, and improve farming yields, he argued.

"Reform is vital to modernise the sector and capitalise on technological advances," Gove told the Oxford Real Farming Conference, emphasising that by "embracing the potential of the fourth revolution we can  we can guarantee the future of the UK as a major global food producer; we can play our part in alleviating poverty and scarcity; we can replenish our store of natural capital, secure investment for the innovations in tackling waste, pollution and emissions which the world will increasingly need - and hand on both a healthier economy and an enriched environment to the next generation".

He stressed that leaving the EU and its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) would make the UK far better placed to capitalise on such technological advances as well as ensuring farmers are better compensated for protecting the environment.

It came as the Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN) campaign group today called for an amendment to the proposed Agriculture Bill to set clear minimum standards for environmental protection and food security. Under the Bill, Defra is proposing to reform agriculture subsidies after Brexit so that farmers are paid for providing 'public goods', such as environmental protection.

Gove explained that proposals for Environmental Land Management (ELM) contracts would "provide farmers and other land managers with a pipeline of income to supplement the money they make from food production, forestry and other business activities".

"ELMs should be seen as an additional crop, with the government, rather than a commercial player, entering into a contract with farmers to ensure we increase the provision of environmental services, many of which will also enhance farm productivity," he explained.

The Environment Secretary conceded farmers and the food industry still wanted greater long-term certainty over how the new subsidy regime will operate and the future food standards they will have to meet, and criticised the government's past record on delivery of environmental and countryside stewardship payments as "woeful".

But while he said could not "entirely pre-empt" the outcome of the government's spending review set for later this year, Gove stressed he would "continue to demonstrate the case for, and put in place the policies that will underpin, long-term investment".

Gove also reiterated his support for the Prime Minister's Brexit deal - which is set for a much-anticipated Parliamentary vote later this month - as he said a 'no-deal' scenario would result in tariffs as high as 40 per cent on beef and lamb exports to the EU, and potentially undermine the benefits that could result from post-Brexit UK agricultural reform and technological advancement.

He also warned against importing food products from countries where deforestation takes place after Brexit, voicing thinly veiled criticism of those Conservative colleagues who have argued the UK should revert to WTO rules and then seek to rush through trade deals with countries outside the EU.

"The argument that we can lower the cost of food by importing from countries that have pursued deforestation policies ignores the fact that we all have to pay for the environmental damage in other ways," he argued.

"It isn't perfect - but we should never make the perfect the enemy of the good," Gove said of May's deal, emphasising that over time the UK farmers could still flourish outside the EU.  

"With an ambitious new Food Strategy, a properly funded 25 Year Environment Plan, rising investment in agritech, world-leading centres of agricultural science, a new generation of entrepreneurs in the food industry, an innovative new system of support for the provision of environmental services and, above all, farmers across the country committed to demonstrating leadership in everything they do - I believe this country, just as it led the Great Agricultural Revolution of the 18th century can be the vanguard nation for this century's New Agricultural Revolution," Gove said.