Food Security

I was inspired to contribute to the debate after a meeting held last week by Sir Ben Gill, who gathered together 100 brains from different parts of the United Kingdom to consider the issue. The problem with such debates is that 100 issues come flooding out into the ether, rather as they did in the last speech. The subject requires some concentrated focusing-down on what the important issues are, both in the short and long term. I want to thank two friends of mine, Professor Ian Crute from the Rothamsted research laboratory in Harpenden, and Professor Chris Lamb from the John Innes Centre and the Sainsbury laboratory in Norwich; the people there do sterling work on plant genetics and developing food crops. I shall say something more about them when I focus on the issue, but I start with the comments of the new chief scientific adviser, Professor John Beddington. At a GovNet sustainable development UK conference in Westminster, at which the Secretary of State spoke, Professor John Beddington said quite clearly:"““There is progress on climate change. But out there is another major problem. It is very hard to imagine how we can see a world growing enough crops to produce renewable energy and at the same time meet the enormous increase in the demand for food which is quite properly going to happen as we alleviate poverty.””" That is a strong, political message from our new chief scientific adviser. I am sure that more will be said about that issue in the coming months. The year 2008 is distinguished by the fact that fewer members of the world population derive their livelihood in rural areas than in towns. More people buy food produced by others than are involved in its production. A few years ago, land workers in this country disappeared. In my part of the world—East Anglia—there were always strong Labour constituencies, because farm workers knew which way the cookie crumbled. It all changed when new factories were built and so on. We lost a lot of that technology and skill on the land. This year is the centenary of a discovery that has probably saved more lives than any other discovery in the history of mankind—the Haber-Bosch process of making ammonia from gaseous nitrogen and hydrogen, which was discovered in 1908. It provided the ability to manufacture nitrogen fertiliser, and it is estimated that without access to synthetic nitrogen fertilisers there would be half as many humans on the planet or we would have had to cultivate double the land area. Either way, there would be major ecological destruction, conflict and suffering. Some people argue against that view, but whether one loves them or hates them, pesticides and insecticides have made an important contribution to farming development across the world. We feed 6.5 billion people from 1.5 billion hectares of land. The area of land used to grow grain globally—about 2 billion tonnes per annum—has hardly increased in the past 50 years, but crop productivity has kept ahead, as we have heard, of rapid population growth, which has been achieved through foresight and sustained investment in agricultural science and technology, from the period between the wars until 20 years or so ago, when we became rather complacent. That may cost us dear. With global grain stocks at an all-time low—less than 10 days' worth, it is estimated—and with ever-increasing demand from an urbanising, Asian population; with the losses of animal land to degradation and urbanisation; and with the impact of climate change and the rising cost of oil, we can be sure that high food prices will be with us for some time to come. The only response is to increase the food supply. There are only two ways to increase food production: plough more land or increase the yield per hectare. I shall deal with the first proposal and discount it as a solution. The total land area of the earth is about 13 billion hectares, but more than a third is desert, high mountains or covered in ice, so it does not support the growth of crops. Of the remaining two thirds, we cultivate 1.5 billion hectares, which is only 18 per cent. of the land area of the planet, leaving more than 7 billion hectares, which support plant growth. However, we would be ill advised to use that land because it is stable pasture, forest and savannah, and harbours a vast supply of stored carbon. If we plough it or cut down forests, we release carbon into the atmosphere and reduce the earth's capacity to fix carbon. That is not a sensible thing to do, although we know that deforestation is taking place and that the pressure to bring more land into cultivation is indeed very great in some parts of the world, and there is a strong political pressure. If we are not going to plough more land, how are we going to achieve more productivity per hectare to meet global demand? Scientific knowledge comes into it, as does an understanding of plant genetics, soil science, plant pathology, and pest biology. In fact, we must harness our understanding of the components of agricultural ecosystems. Science will enable us to remove some of the things that constrain agricultural productivity, and we must invest in it quickly. Since the years of the previous Government, we have believed that as a wealthy nation we will always be able to buy what food we want on world markets and that affordable food will always be available. As a result of that complacency, we have under-invested and severely damaged what was, and still can be, a world-class capability in agricultural science. The point is that as food prices increase, it is the poorest of the world, and even the poor in rich nations like ours, who suffer. In Europe, and particularly the UK, we have fertile resilient soils, a favourable climate and excellent skills, so we have an obligation to the future to ensure that we obtain maximum productivity with minimum environmental disturbance from that natural resource. Let me return to the science. Five things constrain plant growth. Science and technology cannot deal with all of them, but it can address most of them. First, radiant energy for photosynthesis is all about latitude. We cannot do too much about that, but through molecular genetics it is possible to make photosynthesis more efficient and therefore fix more carbon for growth. The work at Rothamsted research laboratory in Harpenden introduces the prospect of higher crop yields by increasing the efficiency with which radiant energy is converted to chemical energy. The UK has a jewel there—the longest established agricultural research centre in the world, and a deep reservoir of knowledge and expertise which we must do more to foster and exploit. Another constraint is temperature, which is a feature of latitude and altitude. We can use modern glasshouse technology to conserve energy and prolong growing seasons but, more importantly, we must anticipate problems of extreme temperature, even here in the UK, where it could have catastrophic effects on cereal yields. Mathematical simulation and modelling from Rothamsted point to the need for emphasis to be placed on breeding crops with resilience to high temperatures, which are predicted to become more frequent. A further constraint is water. The only reason we can grow food in some parts of the world, such as India, is that we move water from places where it is plentiful to places where it is scarce. We can use sophisticated technology to use water more efficiently, and 70 per cent. of fresh water on the planet is used for agriculture. The competition for water for urban, domestic, industrial and agricultural use is becoming more intense. It could, indeed, become the source of warfare and strife. Science can deliver to us crops that use water more efficiently—a really green and valuable application of the science of genetic engineering. That is the target of several research groups, and in particular, that which I have spoken about at the John Innes centre in Norwich. At the beginning of my contribution, I mentioned nitrogen fertiliser and its importance for cultivation. Adequate crop nutrition—sufficient provision of nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium and trace elements—is essential for high yields. We need crops that are nutrient-use efficient, and we need to use high technology to ensure that nutrients get to the right place at the right time to bring about their effects. Nitrogen fertilisers require fossil fuels for their synthesis and they can pollute watercourses; we must use them more efficiently. The world experts in that arena are also located in the UK, at Rothamsted. In Norwich, we have groups working on the prospect of transferring to other crop plants, such as wheat, the genetic capacity of legumes, which fix their own nitrogen through associated bacteria. We can transfer them across plants. We surely must resource better and encourage more important work, because it is vital to our future. The fifth constraint and the source of much wasted water, energy, labour, nutrients and so forth are pests, diseases and weeds. Some 25 per cent. of all crops are lost to those causes before or after harvest, and the control of pests, diseases and weeds would go a long way to providing the extra 50 per cent. of food that we will need between now and 2030, when the world's population will reach about 9 billion. How do we do that? In Norwich, at the Sainsbury laboratory at the John Innes centre and at Rothamsted, pioneering work exploits natural plant defences and their genetic control, aided by green chemistry to deliver a new generation of pest-resistant and disease-resistant crops. The threat of resistance to pesticides, the agricultural equivalent of MRSA, is being countered and responded to at Rothamsted, with the application of new molecular diagnostic methods and management practices that will sustain the effective lifetime of those valuable chemicals. In conclusion, Members will realise from what I have said that the challenge is great, but we have the tools, technology and intellect to meet it, and we must nurture encourage and resource the science. This is my message: we must sweep away any regulatory environment that impedes that progress and makes the lives of farmers who grow food more difficult. We ought to ensure that safe pesticides exist, and as the argument develops we ought seriously to consider GM crops again. We all know the arguments in respect of GM crops, and I do not want to go through them now, because we will do so on many future occasions, but about 300 million Americans have consumed food derived from GM crops—without a single tort in the most litigious society in history. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) laughs, and we will continue the argument until the cows come home. The use of Bt cotton in, for example, China benefits small-scale farmers. Other people will point to the monopolies of the various pharmaceutical companies—Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta and so on—and how they develop the technology. The argument is there. However, as the Minister said, we have to look seriously at GM as part of a key breeding tool in the context of a shift to science-based, targeted and predictive breeding underpinned by some kind of plant genetics. GM is not the whole process, but it is a part that we have to contemplate seriously and get back to. The arguments are not all about how the technology is used; they are also about how such crops are produced and what good they are. As was said in a debate on human embryology, when GM was used to produce insulin in human cells there was no argument whatever; the development was quite tolerable. However, when we try to make plants that are resistant to certain bugs and viruses, resistance seems to develop among certain parts of the community. The science-to-crop-improvement pipeline is fractured internationally and it requires significant capacity development in developing countries. Today we have read in the papers that not enough physicists are coming through; we also need more plant geneticists. We need people who want to work on plants and develop new, efficient crops that are resistant to drought and so on. We must get such people into our education system. Plants are not always popular; animal and medical techniques and technologies seem to take many of the best people. We have to keep hammering home the message that we need to produce more food and we need to use science to do it.