HORIZON SCANNING SUB-GROUP

NOTE OF A MEETING ON 11 JUNE 2001

ALBANY HOUSE, PETTY FRANCE, LONDON SW1

Note: These are the views of the sub-group, not necessarily those of the full Commission

John Gilliland

Julie Hill (Convenor)

Derek Langslow

Roger Turner

Anne Packer (Secretary)

1.      Ed Dart and ChiChi Iweajunwa were unable to attend.

Previous meeting

2.      The draft minutes of the previous meeting were slightly revised and agreed.

3.      Julie Hill welcomed Ben Gill and Elizabeth Hogben from the National Farmers’ Union and Brian Johnson from English Nature.  She outlined the work of the AEBC’s horizon scanning group, and explained that this was part of discussions with people from a wide range of viewpoints about possible futures for agriculture and biotechnology. 

4.      Ben Gill said that the focus of UK policy had to be within a global context, since developments in other countries were relevant.  UK was in a global society and trade globalisation would continue.  With a 20 year horizon, trends in population growth, particularly in the Far East and Asia would put pressure on food supply, but there was unlikely to be a shortage of food for those with money. For example sustainable farming was likely to be re-introduced in the Ukraine.

5.      Trends in the UK, which tended to follow those of the USA with a 5-10 year lag, were for more processed food, and for more added value, but also pressure for cheapness. FAO and World Bank predictions suggested that within our lifetime not only could we have country to country trading in sequestration rights, but that they would become the major source of farmers’ incomes.  This would encourage the production of non-food crops ranging from biomass to oil producing crops to starch crops and other speciality crops.  Crops could not only be beneficial to neutralising the carbon cycle but also in reducing other dangerous emissions such as nitrous oxide.  Kyoto set a target of a 10% reduction here which coincidentally is the amount produced in the raw material production for nylon from mineral oil.  Development of coriander to produce higher levels of petroseliinic acid could remove this nitrous oxide and achieve the target.  Climate change was worrying and could not be ignored - agriculture had a role to play in reducing it. 

6.      The UK needed to add value to food crops, as it could never compete with high volume producers eg for Brazilian poultry or Argentine beef.  There was a distinction between added value and added cost.

7.      Brian Johnson noted that there were domestic as well as global market forces, and that one of the major growth areas for farmland use was leisure and environmental use.  Farmland might change towards environmental goods in some areas.

8.      Ben Gill considered the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) had distorted the balance of production, particularly favouring cereal production, but the concept of mixed farming, with grass breaks, was on the way back.  There would be greater use of the countryside as a leisure resource, and in some parts there would be greater technical efficiency in farming.  The need for CAP reform is a particular driver for change.  The CAP is production focussed, and starting again the ideal would be for support to farms (not crops), allowing farms to come closer to the market place for food and non food production, with crops for distillation into high value low volume speciality oils.  The UK climate is currently well suited to grassland and it would be hard to compete with other countries by bulk production of biofuels (such as ethanol) from maize. 

9.      Brian Johnson talked of the need to consider the appropriateness of farming systems, including land suitability and peoples’ skills and the economic and agronomic volatility of inappropriate farming.  Sustainability was important, including the sustainability of soil fertility and structure.  This was already an issue in the USA, eastern Europe and Australia, with some areas suffering severe soil degradation, because of adapting the land to the crop rather than the other way round.  Marker assisted breeding and genomics had scope for crops that are better adapted to soil conditions than at present.

10. The solution to soil degradation was mixed farming – moving away from highly intensive arable.  Plant breeders and industry may offer whole rotations to farmers, and sustainability will be a real advantage and driver.  Within the next 15 years there could be hybrid varieties especially designed for any particular areas, particularly if apomixis is introduced into crop plants.  Public policy as well as the market forces will always influence farming. 

11. If biotechnology gave solutions that involve plants defending themselves, the plants have to be healthy in the first place, so soil and water were crucial. 

12. Both speakers noted that local availability of water was also a key factor, with associated aspects like salinity, and flood and drought problems associated with climate change.  There would be drivers for drought and salt resistant crops.  Not many reservoirs were being built, as people didn’t like them nearby.   

13. Ben Gill considered that since seed listing is national, varieties may not be well matched to individual localities.  Practices like early sowing of winter cereals (eg In August rather than October) tended to increase the use of insecticides.

14. The trend for technical efficiency and reduced costs would be maintained, with decreasing numbers of farmers and farm workers. 

15. Brian Johnson considered that emphasis on efficiency would give a bleak picture for biodiversity.  The UK hasn’t the luxury of large wilderness areas and most wildlife used farmland at some stage in its life history, so this produced a dilemma for biotechnology.  Biotechnology could in theory increase productivity, freeing up land for biodiversity, but the important question was whether biotechnology developments going on now were likely to lead to this result, even if they could in theory.  70% of farmland biodiversity was outside fields, eg in margins and woodland, with 30% inside, and a set of species were reliant on arable land.

16. Ben Gill said the media and public sometimes consider GM and biotechnology as a single tool, whereas it encompasses a broad range of tools, from xenotransplantation and drug manufacture to transgenic crops.  There are ethical questions eg of putting animal genes into plants – possibly salinity resistance genes from animals for rice.  The question should be a decision for those countries where the trait is needed, not the UK.  An issue to consider was whether the risk/benefit trade off was fundamental or consequential.  People should listen to detailed arguments for and against and then consider if they were happy.

17.  Brian Johnson noted that ethics and moral judgements were often intertwined.  There was no clear-cut ethical code for research and development outside the human species, so the public felt intuitively suspicious.  In discussion members agreed that peoples views do change over time, and that they might change if tangible benefits became apparent. 

18. Ben Gill considered it would be very foolish to say ‘no’ to biotechnology in Europe.  He saw future use of biotechnology as essential.  The need for renewable raw materials was so great that we don’t have the luxury of waiting for normal plant breeding techniques to become feasible to develop such crops, when new technologies may already offer methods.  We shall be very short of land (though not food), land will be needed to produce crops for industry, as well as food and environmental goods.  The land for crops needs to be efficient, and return to high employment on land was unthinkable.  Sustainable systems were needed, but intensive and extensive farming were not helpful descriptions.  In mixed systems of the future there would be room for biodiversity in the total system, if not in all fields.  If we did not allow UK industry to take up technology while competitors had it, it would consign UK agriculture to a backwater.  A better debate was needed, and over the past year the tone of documentary programmes seemed to be becoming more positive.

19. Brian Johnson said that having varieties available such as low lignin GM trees could have very substantial environmental benefits, since removing lignin from wood pulp during paper production was very environmentally unfriendly.  The timescale for tree work was becoming shorter.   If the yield and quality of agricultural products could be increased by biotechnology, the most likely developments would be in ‘quality’ traits eg the amount and type of sugar in sugar beet or the yield and fatty acid content in oilseed crops.  There was a huge ‘acceptance’ hurdle for biotechnology, which he did not see being broken down in the next five years, even if very beneficial products were developed, because of public distrust in biotechnology.

20. In discussion, members agreed that over the next 3-4 years there could be far greater use of genomics in crop breeding, and genes might be moved from one plant to another by conventional means.  The genetic basis of allelopathy (plants inhibiting competitors) was beginning to be understood, and might be specifically targeted.  There might well be far less public concern about this.  At present breeders just don’t know the full range of  genes that plants possess. The organic movement had already said that it was content with marker assisted breeding.  Following such developments, people might possibly be more likely to look again at transgenics, if there were substantial environmental and food quality benefits.

21. Julie Hill thanked both speakers for their stimulating input to the AEBC horizon scanning group’s work.

AEBC Secretariat