The team will be led by Craig Sigley and will be split regionally with specialist relationship managers being responsible for leading agri-tech in the North, Midlands, South West, South East and Eastern regions.

The new agri-tech team will consist of:

• Craig Sigley, national lead for agri-tech
• Paul Hazzard, agri-tech agricultural manager for south Wales and South West
• Lizzie Asplin, agri-tech agricultural manager for the South East
• Dave Pruden, agri-tech agricultural manager for the North
• George Sigley, agri-tech agricultural manager for the Midlands and north Wales
• Karl Blagg, agri-tech agricultural manager for the East

All the appointments have previously spent time at Barclays, with some of them serving in the bank’s agricultural finance team.

The relationship managers will work with farmers to understand what the latter wants from emerging players in the sector, as well as support agri-tech companies with their business growth plans.

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Barclays has already assisted a number of agri-tech firms, including Agrivi – which helps farmers to manage and monitor crop production – and Well Cow, which has developed a device that can detect digestive problems in cattle.

Mark Suthern, head of agriculture at Barclays, felt that agri-tech was thriving in the UK and future innovations were likely to help address many of the issues that the farming industry faced today.

“We’ve been supporting farmers for over 300 years, and we know that introducing the latest cutting-edge technology to our clients has the power to make a real positive impact, driving productivity and improving profitability.

"Technology has already transformed the way some of our customers farm, for example, using drones to survey land and track livestock, robotic fruit-picking machines and sensors that monitor poultry.

"Our new dedicated agri-tech team is ideally placed to help start-ups scale and grow and connect them with the farming community."

Barclays’ announcement comes after NatWest added agricultural finance specialist UK Agricultural Finance (UKAF) to its panel of alternative lenders as it looked to support the farming industry.