Organic Food

I confess that I am not aware of that study and I shall look it up readily later. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for drawing it to my attention. Perhaps that is the price of following a brief that came from the other side of the argument. I want to touch also on the issue of food security, which has been referred to by a number of hon. Members. I take the view that this will be of increasing importance in this country. There is an apparent contradiction between lower yields from organics and the demand for more and more food production. I understand that the lower yields vary very much depending on the type of product. For salads, the difference is marginal—5 or 10 per cent.—and in dairy foods it is about 15 per cent. However, for bulk commodities, such as grain, the difference in yields between organic and conventional farming can be about 40 per cent. Obviously, that is a horrendously large number and would have a huge impact on food security. Those are the figures for north-west Europe. The organic movement claims, however, that in much of the rest of the world, and particularly the developing world, there is virtually no difference. The movement seems to argue, therefore, that everything is perfectly all right. I would point out, however—I think that the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East made this point—that agriculture in those countries is very under-developed. They do not use what most farmers would describe as modern technologies to produce their crops and aid self-sufficiency. I think that if we all adopted the same standards, we would find the same difference in production across the world, which has huge benefits. That is why I started my remarks by saying that we should not criticise farmers with our mouths full. We should never forget that, ultimately, we need to keep people fed. I want to touch on the issue of genetically modified foods as well, which obviously is a hugely vexed issue. I have little doubt that generally people in this country are completely opposed to it, which is why there are virtually no GM products on the market, although a lot of livestock products have been fed on GM foods. My personal view—I stress that it is a personal view—is that the organic movement will live to regret discounting GM foods in the way that it has done. I believe that GM foods have the potential to achieve a great deal of what the organic movement seeks to achieve—a reduction in the use of artificial chemicals to aid production. GM foods could do that. The obvious example is that if we could produce a wheat with its own nitrogen-fixing nodules, such as those in legumes, we could reduce massively the demand for nitrogenous fertiliser, which we have all referred to, in different ways, as one of the major agricultural emissions. I feel that the organic movement has made a fundamental error there. I do not know how long it will be before it thinks twice about it. I was interested in the comment by the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East about the origins of organics. I am much more of a practical man, and was interested in the way in which he described the purpose of horns or, indeed, antlers—about how they are all part of the digestive process. I am lucky enough to own a small herd of pedigree highland cattle with very large horns and can see uses for those horns much more prosaic than aiding digestion, and sometimes I am on the wrong end of those prosaic uses. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on obtaining this fascinating debate. I shall pay him the credit of rereading what he has just said, which is not something that I often do, I must confess. It was a very worthwhile introduction. I believe strongly in choice, but that choice must be on the provision of accurate information. Like other Members, I object strongly to conventional farmers criticising organic farmers as a bunch of cranks, but equally I share strongly the views of everybody who has said that organic producers and the organic movement should stop suggesting that everybody who uses pesticides is out to poison the world. That is blatantly untrue. I am quite certain that if it had not been for the development of pesticides in the last 60 or 70 years, most of us would be going hungry today.