Food labelling schemes are not helping consumers make informed sustainability choices, nor rewarding the most sustainable farmers

Dr Harriet Bartlett

In a study published recently in the journal Nature Food, a team of researchers from the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and São Paulo conclude that the way we classify farm types and label pork isn’t helping consumers to make informed decisions when it comes to buying more sustainable meat. Instead of singling out particular farm types or practices, the research highlights a need to focus on meaningful, measurable outcomes, and reward individual farms based on these. Lead author Dr Harriet Bartlett discusses the findings.  

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What is (risk) appropriate regulation of gene editing technology?

Graham Brookes & Stuart Smyth

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Despite the much-hyped expectation that Europe was on course to follow other parts of the world in removing GMO-style regulatory requirements from gene edited (GE) crops, with EU elections looming and no agreement in sight the bloc now risks slipping back towards precautionary inertia. Summarising their recent peer-reviewed paper exploring risk-appropriate regulation for gene editing, agricultural economists Graham Brookes and Stuart Smyth warn that we must learn the lessons from past experience of divergent international regulation of agricultural innovations. The impact of over-precautionary EU regulation of gene editing will not only disadvantage European agriculture, but will also compromise global efforts to address urgent climate, biodiversity and food security challenges, they argue.     

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The importance of translating plant science into practice

Professor Mario Caccamo

The lack of long-term strategic funding for research organisations that are focused on translational research, as recently reported in the media, raises serious concerns about the future of applied crop science in the UK. Efforts to translate fundamental scientific discoveries into practical farming innovations which can boost productivity while addressing climate and biodiversity challenges are too slow and fragmented when compared to other countries. Bridging this ‘valley of death’ may require a major re-organisation of our R&D landscape, suggests NIAB chief executive Professor Mario Caccamo. 

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ELMS: It’s time for Defra to go back to the drawing board, and listen to the science

Matt Ridley

In the first of a series of essays examining the impact of farming innovations on food production and the environment, science writer, author and farmer Matt Ridley argues that the UK Government is squandering opportunities to accelerate the adoption of yield-boosting advances on Britain’s farms which could increase food production while freeing up land for nature. In pursuing a land-sharing approach to farm policy, Defra Ministers are failing to heed their own scientific advice, let alone the accumulating body of scientific evidence which supports a land-sparing approach as the most effective policy option to produce enough food while leaving room for nature, biodiversity and climate action.

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ELMS: Defra not heeding the multiple warning signs from their own science on land-sharing vs land-sparing. Is this a leap in the dark for Britain’s farmers?

A pro-innovation think tank is calling on MPs to investigate the impact of the Government’s environmental land management schemes (ELMS) on domestic food security after a Defra-funded scientific review identified multiple risks to both food production and the environment from its land-sharing policies.

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Sustainable Yield Growth - a gamechanger for the SDGs?

Dr Derrick Wilkinson

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A 70% increase in global demand for food by 2050, set against urgent biodiversity and climate pressures, requires an unprecedented transformation of our food system. This challenge can in part be mitigated by reducing food losses and waste, and through dietary change. On their own, however, these measures will not be enough. Promoting sustainable yield growth provides the most powerful solution to meeting the growing food needs of billions of hungry people, while protecting biodiversity and improving the health of the ecosystems on which we all rely. If real progress is to be made toward the Sustainable Development Goals and Paris climate agreements, the technical and technological innovations at the heart of sustainable yield growth must be given the highest priority, argues retired UK economist Dr Derrick Wilkinson.

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False dawn for gene edited crops in the EU?

Steven E Cerier

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With Europe’s agriculture sector in turmoil, as farmers stage mass protests against unworkable environmental restrictions, new breeding technologies such as gene editing could go a long way in helping the EU achieve its sustainability goals. Considering the bloc’s stringent, historical opposition to GMOs in agriculture, the European Parliament’s recent decision to adopt looser rules for the cultivation of NBTs is a significant step forward. But the regulatory regime being proposed is not likely to set the stage for a full-scale food revolution in the EU. Without a commitment to complete deregulation, Europe will remain a genetic engineering backwater for decades to come, argues retired international economist Steven Cerier.

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Why the Nuffield Council on Bioethics must revisit its report on genome editing in farmed animals 

Professor the Lord Trees & Lord Curry of Kirkharle 

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Leading veterinarian Lord Trees and veteran farming champion Lord Curry of Kirkharle explain why they have called on the Nuffield Council on Bioethics to revise and update its 2021 report on the ethics of genome editing in farmed animals. They challenge the report’s characterisation of our food production system as ‘morally indefensible and unsustainable’, citing evidence of significant and ongoing improvements in livestock breeding and welfare improvements, driven by science. They also warn of the report’s disproportionately negative impact on the political and public debate, urging Nuffield to take greater account of the ethical implications of not embracing a technology with the potential to deliver solutions to previously intractable disease problems, such as bird flu in poultry, PRRS in pigs and BVD in cattle.   

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Focus on genetics and IP needed to boost Britain's horticulture sector

Peter Button

A recent one-off House of Lords inquiry into the challenges facing the horticulture industry, and the ensuing report entitled ‘Sowing the Seeds: A blooming English horticultural sector’, was a missed opportunity to put the essential genetic research, plant breeding and seed sectors which support the industry on a more secure footing, writes former UPOV Vice Secretary-General Peter Button.

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Crop biotechnology opponents are losing their war against genetic engineering, but the battle for science is not yet won

Steven E. Cerier

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After years of reaping the tainted rewards of disinformation, the ground is shifting against anti-biotech activists. The world’s eight most populous countries now either grow GM crops and or have approved the deregulation of gene-edited crops. That’s more than 50 percent of the global population. But for a number of countries, GMOs still remain in regulatory limbo as a residue of the Frankenfood branding by anti-biotech campaigners. In an ideal, science-driven world, with overwhelming evidence that both transgenic and gene-edited crops pose no identifiable unique health or environmental threats, the two complementary breeding techniques would face minimal regulatory hurdles. We will eventually look back upon this period of hyped worries and predictions of impending environmental catastrophe and be mystified at what all the fuss was about, writes Steven Cerier.

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Harnessing the power of farm-level data

George Freeman MP

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Former UK science minister George Freeman MP explains his longstanding passion, first inspired by the US Field to Market programme, for using farm-level data to drive improvements in sustainable, efficient food production, and to inform consumers about the environmental impact of their food choices. He reflects on his disappointment that the pivotal role envisaged for agrimetrics in the UK Agri-Tech Strategy has not yet transpired in practice, but highlights two recent developments which give cause for optimism that Britain may get back on track to mirror the US in harnessing the enormous potential of agricultural data and sustainability metrics.

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Europe’s farmers are fighting for the ability to continue to farm

David Zaruk

While there is no single issue behind the angry farmer protests taking place across Europe, at its heart is a frustration felt among farmers that society, governments and special interests have denigrated them and their profession. Activists blame them for climate change, environmental pollution and unsustainability, when farmers see themselves as the stewards of the land. Green restrictions like the EU Farm2Fork strategy will make farming unprofitable and perhaps no longer even possible, designed by cosmopolitan zealots with no idea what is required to bring a harvest in. Farmers are fighting for the ability to continue to farm. Among other actions to stop alienating farmers, Government regulators need to speak up for the science and data when activist groups spread lies about the safety of conventional agriculture tools, rather than quietly letting the fearmongers undermine public trust in our farmers, writes EU risk and science communications specialist David Zaruk.

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Is hi-tech, intensive livestock production more sustainable, more biosecure?

The Earl of Caithness

Faced with a ‘potential explosion’ of livestock disease in Britain, the Earl of Caithness highlights the enormous potential to prevent the spread of infectious diseases in farmed animals through genetic advances in which UK research is world-leading. He urges UK Ministers to speed up plans to allow the commercial use of precision breeding techniques in livestock so that these advances can be deployed as soon as possible to prevent animal suffering and to improve biosecurity. Noting that infectious diseases do not differentiate between animals reared intensively or extensively, he also refutes claims from environmental NGOs and animal welfare campaigners that more intensive forms of livestock production increase the risk of zoonotic diseases. In fact, the scientific evidence points in the opposite direction – intensive livestock farming may actually be more sustainable, and more biosecure.

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Gene editing: Is it time for full disclosure of all plant breeding methods?

Nigel Moore

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Plant breeder Nigel Moore notes that the public debate around gene editing has highlighted a worrying lack of awareness among consumers that none of our familiar food crops are ‘in their natural form’, and that all have been adapted and improved for society’s benefit by science-based plant breeding. Frustrated that the enormous contribution of genetic innovation in improving the quality, availability and affordability of our food supply is routinely overlooked or airbrushed out by the time products reach the supermarket shelves, he emphasises the breeding industry’s commitment to transparency, and asks if it is time for full disclosure of all plant breeding methods?  Only by contextualising the way we currently improve our food crops, and by improving consumers’ access to information, can we hope to avoid a situation in which precision breeding is singled out as ‘different’ in an apparent vacuum of knowledge about other conventional breeding methods, he argues.  

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Throttle back on production to spite the supermarkets? Has UK farming finally lost the plot?

Paul Temple

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Reflecting on discussions at this year’s Oxford Farming Conference, and with some SFI payment options reportedly offering a better return to landowners than farmers producing food, the idea that we should throttle back on production to tackle perceived imbalances in the value chain might turn out to be a catastrophic own-goal for our industry. A more secure and sustainable future for Britain’s farmers does not lie in dialling back production, battling against our customers, or relying on future taxpayer handouts for producing food less efficiently. We urgently need farm policies which benchmark, measure and reward improvements in sustainable, efficient food production, which respond to the COP28 agenda by setting more ambitious targets for domestic output and clear goals for reducing the environmental footprint of our food system, and which encourage the use of new agricultural technology and innovation to do so, argues mixed farmer Paul Temple.

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Radical rethink needed into how we regulate and incentivise the delivery of agricultural innovation in the UK

Professor Tina Barsby OBE

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Expressed per head of population, or in relation to GDP, the United Kingdom leads the world in terms of high-citation academic publications in agriculture, according to a recent study. High-citation papers are defined as those most likely to support innovation and deliver impact. So why does UK leadership in academic science not translate into leadership in agricultural productivity growth, in which the UK continues to lag behind most other developed agricultural economies? And why has it not positioned the UK as a major destination for private sector investment in agricultural innovation – compared, for example, to Britain’s healthcare or medical life science sectors? Plant scientist Professor Tina Barsby offers some thoughts.

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Land use: OF&G claims for organic farming benefits don’t stack up

Daniel Pearsall & Dr Julian Little

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Questioning claims in a recent policy paper that trebling the area of organic farmland in England will deliver benefits for the climate and biodiversity, Daniel Pearsall and Dr Julian Little point to the increasing weight of scientific evidence that optimising food production on as small a land area as possible is the most sustainable way to feed a growing population while leaving space for nature and carbon sequestration. Any increase in organic farming will inevitably reduce yields, requiring more land elsewhere to make up for the loss in production. Peer-reviewed research indicates that this would be at a cost to biodiversity and greenhouse gas emissions much greater than the on-farm benefit of organic practice. Consistent, science-based metrics of agricultural sustainability are urgently needed, taking account of a broad range of resource use and environmental indicators, related to the quantity for food produced. Only then will we truly understand the comparative sustainability impact of our food choices. For some it may make for uncomfortable reading, they argue.         

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IP in agriculture benefits everyone

Peter Button

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Case studies from around the world show that introducing effective systems of IP protection in agriculture supports investment, innovation and economic growth in both developed and developing countries. It also promotes greater choice and diversity of crop varieties, and incentivises efforts to protect and conserve natural biodiversity. Far from demonising the role of intellectual property in farming, we should be celebrating and championing its contribution to a more productive, resilient and sustainable global food system, argues Peter Button, former UPOV Vice-Secretary General.

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Precision breeding: Food Standards Agency’s plans must not put England behind the EU

Karen Holt & Daniel Pearsall

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The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) deserves credit for the science-based progression in its thinking around the regulation of food and feed produced using precision breeding techniques such as gene editing. A recent public consultation issued by the FSA also gives cause for optimism that the Agency is thinking strategically about reform of restrictive GMO rules inherited from the EU. But with Europe fast catching up with England’s plans to deregulate gene editing techniques, could it be a case of two steps forward, one step back, ask Karen Holt and Daniel Pearsall. 

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Can agriculture save the planet? Insights from COP28 and beyond

Jack Bobo

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The discussions at COP28 highlight the critical role of agricultural innovations in achieving food security and climate goals sustainably. The acceptance and adoption of these innovations by society are paramount. If the public does not support the introduction of such technologies, even the most groundbreaking scientific solutions will remain underutilised. Science tells us what we can do, but, ultimately, it is the public that tells us what we should do. Therefore, engaging consumers in discussions about food production is essential, writes Jack Bobo, Director of the University of Nottingham Food Systems Institute.

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Defra must publish a full impact assessment of farm policies on  domestic food production

Julian Sturdy MP

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Highlighting concerns that a UK policy emphasis on lower-yield farming practices and land use change will inevitably take its toll on domestic food production, Julian Sturdy MP calls on Defra to publish a full impact assessment of its Environmental Land Management (ELM) and Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) policies on farm-level yields, national agricultural productivity growth, and domestic food self-sufficiency. It is not too late to adopt a data-led approach to measure and monitor the impact of our farm policies, he argues. The Agriculture Act includes specific provisions to equip farmers with the technology to generate, collect and share data, and to support productivity improvements. Together, these policy tools could and should be used not only to track the impact of government policies, but also to inform and drive sustainable gains in agricultural productivity, and to benchmark and reward farmers for genuine progress in reducing their environmental footprint per unit of food produced. It is vital that we adopt a clear-sighted, evidence-based approach to the development and implementation of future farm policies. Otherwise, we may risk sleepwalking into a food crisis, he warns.  

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Which farming system better preserves insect populations: organic or conventional?

Jon Entine

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Science journalist Jon Entine challenges the simplistic narrative that modern intensive agriculture is steering us toward catastrophic declines in global insect populations, highlighting to a 2020 meta-study of 166 long-term surveys which points to a levelling off of insect declines in recent decades, and an increase in some species. Global population growth and rising affluence over coming decades will require a sharp increase in necessary food calories, which can only occur by expanding farmable acreage - or by increasing yields on existing farmland. Using technology to boost yields on currently farmed acres - growing more food on less land—is the most important action we can take to protect habitat and biodiversity, he suggests, warning that a turn away from efficient, intensive agriculture to accommodate the ideological fashion of our times could be a disaster for the fragile insect population.

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Regenerative agriculture - hype or hope?

Professor Mario Caccamo

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As interest in regenerative agriculture reaches fever pitch across the value chain, NIAB is preparing the ground for a major research effort to deliver the science needed for a commercial scale-up of regen-ag, combining research leadership in soil science, variety testing, rotational agronomy, precision agronomy, cover cropping, data science and water use efficiency. A progressive, science-based approach, embracing innovation and harnessing the power of large-scale data, offers the potential for high-yielding, profitable crop production to go hand in hand with reducing agriculture’s environmental and climate impacts, writes Professor Mario Caccamo.       

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Pro-science think-tank calls for UK Agri-Tech Strategy re-set

Following the recent announcement that three of the four Agri-Tech Centres established under the 2013 UK Agri-Tech Strategy could be merged into a single Catapult, and amid reports that the fourth centre, Agrimetrics, faces an uncertain future without continued Government support, pro-science think-tank Science for Sustainable Agriculture (SSA) is calling for an evidence-led re-set of the Strategy, with a renewed focus on genetic innovation and data.

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Britain's organic farmers must not be locked out of the gene editing revolution

David Hill

Momentum is building to permit gene edited crops in organic agriculture within the European Union. Meanwhile, Britain’s organic farmers risk being left behind by the campaigning stance of UK organic sector bodies, whose dogmatic rejection of these more precise breeding technologies may not reflect the views of members on the ground, warns Norfolk arable farmer and registered organic processor, David Hill.

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Time for a fresh look at the UK rulebook on using the GM method for crop improvement

Professor Jonathan Jones FRS

After almost 30 years’ safe and effective use of GM crops around the world, the technology has delivered major benefits for agriculture and the environment in terms of increased yields, lower pesticide use and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. But national bans and overly-restrictive rules on GM crop cultivation have limited the global gains to just one-third of the technology’s potential. At a time of mounting concern over the food, energy and climate pressures facing the planet, The Royal Society is calling for a more proportionate and evidence-led approach to regulating GM crops in the UK, explains plant scientist Professor Jonathan Jones.

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NEWS: Benefits for food security, animal welfare and the environment: New study shows balanced breeding programmes in pigs can increase litter size while also increasing birth weights and improving piglet survival rates
 

A new peer-reviewed study has underlined the contribution of balanced farm animal breeding programmes in delivering combined benefits in terms of food production, animal welfare and environmental impact.

Published in the journal Frontiers in Animal Science, the study examines long-term trends in commercial pig breeding since the early 2000s, focusing on data relating to litter size, piglet birth weight and piglet survival rates according to different genetic types (breeding lines).

Improvements have been most marked over the past decade, with the data showing that from 2012 until 2022, average litter size increased by 3.5 pigs, birth weight increased by 30g per pig, while piglet survival rates improved by 8%.

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Label organic products, not gene edited, on food safety grounds

Daniel Pearsall & Matt Ridley

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The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) has followed the science in recommending a streamlined approach to regulating gene edited food and feed products, mirroring the rules already adopted in countries such as Canada, Argentina and Japan, and in line with the approach proposed for the EU. Howls of protest from the organic lobby demanding mandatory labelling of gene edited products must be met with the same level-headed, evidence-based response. Rather than statutory labelling of gene edited products, for which there is no scientific basis in food safety terms, the FSA might more reasonably turn its attention to requiring statutory labelling of organic products – in the same way as raw milk products – to alert consumers to the potential additional risks in terms of food safety and hygiene, write Daniel Pearsall and Matt Ridley.  

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