Agriculture: Royal Society Report

My Lords, I start by thanking my noble friend Lady Byford for giving us the opportunity to consider what the United Kingdom could and should contribute to the agenda of addressing the challenges of global food security. We need globally co-ordinated programmes of research that can be translated rapidly into sustainable food production, particularly in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa where food security is an immediate and urgent issue. I declare several interests. I am a farmer. I chair the Living with Environmental Change programme, which is a co-ordinated programme of publicly funded research. Indeed, food security is one of our major priorities, led by the Biotechnology and Biological Services Research Council. I should also put on record that I was on the review panel for the Royal Society’s report. It said in so many words that it did not have to take any notice of members of the review panel, but nevertheless, there I am on the list. In the context of global food security and the research needed to ensure food supplies, we should note that this report from the Royal Society is dealing with the potential for food crop production. One must recognise that animal husbandry, agricultural engineering, and indeed, the social sciences all can and should make a contribution to this great issue of global food security. It is not to minimise the role of food crop production. Clearly, it is absolutely key, but we should be under no illusion that food crop production in itself will only be part of the solution. I emphasise once more how important the social sciences will be. Without understanding how research can be transferred into appropriate technology, as has so often been seen in the past, research fails to be effective. I like the concept of sustainable intensification in the report. To many people that sounds like an oxymoron. After all, those of us who farm intensively—I have never made any secret that my farm is certainly intensive—have always been upbraided, sometimes fairly, for the impacts of leakage into soil, air and water and the effects on biodiversity. Sustainable intensification is an important concept. Extensive use of land, or land that could be better protected to provide ecosystem services is an important concept. To be greedy on land will clearly be self-defeating. Agricultural research has been an enormously successful story, not just since Malthus, who is always mentioned in this context. If we compare the food available—theoretically available, although there are availability issues, but the food grown—it is about 29 per cent more per capita, bearing in mind the increase in population, than it was in 1960. I say again, of course, that many people simply do not have access to that food. We need agricultural production systems that do not leak into soil, air and water, which conserve and enhance the soil’s organic matter, which buttress the resilience of our ecosystems and which contribute to habitats. Let us take, for example, pollinator insects, which is a topical subject. There is a lot of interest in how to restore the ability of insects to add to food production. We recognise that by losing habitats we have lost pollinator insects. We need to use land for flood protection and carbon sinks. It is not just trees but soils that provide that. We can also expect farming systems to replace fossil fuels with energy crops. There is a long list of issues that some would have said are irreconcilable. I do not believe that at all. Like my noble friend Lady Byford, I am eternally optimistic. This report from the Royal Society points out the enormous opportunities. Remember, after all, that the biological sciences are serving us well and, although there have been the swingeing cuts to which the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, referred, in the applied research in agriculture, the biological sciences have done well. The report refers to the enormous advances in genomics and molecular biology. Where we are short—this is where I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord, Lord Livsey—is that we lack the soil scientists, the agronomists and the agricultural engineers. I remember that in the 1980s, when I chaired the Agriculture and Food Research Council, long since subsumed into the BBSRC, I had the gloomy job of presiding over closure after closure, which continues to this day. That was because there was simply a lack of understanding as to how transferring the great advances in the biological sciences into food production in this country would be a useful public service. Secretary of State after Secretary of State said that food security was not on the agenda. That changed two years ago, rightly. We need to recognise that we this country can contribute to the underpinning science, to capacity-building in the third world and to the conservation of natural resources, including biodiversity. To do that, we will have to bring all our research institutes, botanic gardens and agricultural colleges in line with the departmental priorities not just of Defra but of DfID.