Food for Thought

FW senior arable reporter Andrew Blake reflects on the wider implications of the foot and mouth outbreak:

One side effect of the latest foot and mouth outbreak is that it highlights the vulnerability of all farming businesses, not just livestock enterprises, to disease.

This year’s rust epidemics in cereals caught many growers, and dare one say even pathologists, by surprise.

So it is perhaps timely to ask just how much is being done to defend us from the use of diseases and pests as terrorist weapons.

Unexpected infections and insect attacks make it all the more important that research into breeding resistance to the widest range of crop diseases and pests is fully maintained.

And any notion that the pesticide defences available against them should be unjustifiably watered down by well-intentioned but misguided environmental concerns must be quashed.

It is imperative that everyone involved in agriculture strives to retain the fullest armoury and uses lateral thinking to out-wit those who wish to disrupt western societies by threatening food supplies.