Practical solutions needed to raise output
Another report on what needs to be done about agricultural policy and research to feed the extra billions expected to inhabit our planet in a few years has just been published.
More specifically this latest document – entitled Feeding the Future and jointly commissioned by the AIC, AHDB, NFU and RASE – mainly examines what’s needed in the UK.
As its authors concede, it follows Sir John Beddington’s Foresight report, published nearly two years ago, and several documents outlining the individual needs of different farming enterprises. Indeed I published my own report under the heading The Challenges Facing World Agriculture as long as five years ago.
The thing is, they all say similar things. Yes, there are differences of emphasis depending on who wrote them. But all use similar population and expected food need statistics to justify their arguments and all agree on the need for greater investment in research, for science rather than emotion to guide policies and for maximum effort to be used to increase sustainable production.
And I ask myself – as the urgency of the situation becomes more pressing and world food shortages loom closer – how many more reports will it need before positive action is taken?
Do those in a position to act not take these reports seriously? Do they actually read them? Do they realise that increasing the genetic potential of crops and livestock requires years, if not generations, of painstaking work? Do they understand how close to a supply crisis we are already?
And I ask myself – as the urgency of the situation becomes more pressing and world food shortages loom closer – how many more reports will it need before positive action is taken?
Feeding the Future calls for such things as more widespread adoption of technology, yield mapping and remote monitoring of livestock. It advocates applying modern genetics and breeding to crops and livestock production – in other words, genetic modification.
It identifies the need for improved understanding of soil health. It looks for further development in integrated management and for more targeted control of pests and diseases. It demands that the training of researchers and advisers be extended to promote the delivery of all the other targets.
In my view, that last objective is one of the most important. The absence of an independent national advisory service since ADAS was (virtually) closed down has left a huge vacuum. I am aware, of course, that those left at ADAS will object to my last sentence (as they have before), but trained advisers travelling around farms keeping an eye on what is happening, spreading news of the latest research and promoting best practice are not there anymore. Agronomists who walk crops and advise on stock, but who have to sell products to earn their keep, are just not the same.
Add to that the restrictions imposed on us by Brussels and/or health and safety officials, together with the financial pressures most sectors have suffered over recent years that have forced farmers to economise on labour and cut corners, and we end up with an industry in which most production has at best been static and at worst fallen. And this at a time when it needs to be heading in the opposite direction.
The urgent need is for scientists to work on practical solutions to industry problems – not just to get their esoteric ideas published in Nature, as is too often the case – and for their findings to be applied widely around the industry. If that happened we might, collectively, begin to address the challenges ahead.
To do this, agriculture and its ancillary organisations must work in unity. And we’ve not been good at that in the past.
David Richardson farms about 400ha (1,000 acres) of arable land near Norwich in Norfolk in partnership with his wife, Lorna. His son Rob is farm manager.
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