News that global agribusiness Syngenta is to cut its UK-based wheat breeding activities after 35 years, focusing activity on the continent, is a serious blow to prospects for home-grown wheat production. UK plant breeders have warned repeatedly that the post-Brexit challenges facing the sector, in terms of extra costs, red tape and regulatory delays, risk stifling investment in UK-based innovation. A continued domestic policy focus on so-called ‘nature-friendly farming’, rather than putting farm-level productivity, innovation and food security centre-stage (as the EU is now doing with its new Vision for Agriculture and Food), can hardly have helped. And while England has carved out a clear head start over the rest of Europe in relation to gene editing in agriculture with the passing into law of the Precision Breeding Act, are we about to cede advantage to the EU on this issue too? Draft guidance from the Food Standards Agency looks set to deter developers with GMO-style data requirements, and serious questions remain over how an exemption for the Precision Breeding Act from planned dynamic alignment of UK and EU food safety rules might work in practice. It is vitally important that the UK-EU realignment deal does not stall precision breeding progress in this country. The UK Government has a unique opportunity to establish an ambitious programme of precision breeding research, regulatory and public outreach services which will enable the UK to capitalise on its hard-won advantage over the rest of Europe, and to embed this capability as a stepping-stone to commercial activity not only in the UK but also in the EU as NGT regulations there are finalised, writes Norfolk farmer David Hill.  

 

There was genuine concern at last week’s Cereals event in Lincolnshire in response to news circulating that global agribusiness Syngenta is set to close its Cambridge-based UK wheat breeding programme, and instead focus all European wheat breeding activity on the continent.

 

Losing one of the UK’s largest and most successful wheat breeding programmes is a serious blow to prospects for home-grown wheat production, particularly amid reports that Syngenta is close to commercialising the first varieties from its F1 hybrid wheat breeding programme.

 

Based in France, this programme is reportedly developing hybrid varieties with better yield consistency due to bigger and stronger wheat plants that can absorb more nutrients and use water more efficiently – precisely the kind of traits we need here after one of the driest springs for more than a century.  

 

Syngenta’s decision to shut down its UK wheat breeding programme after more than 35 years means varieties will no longer be bred here for Britain’s unique growing conditions. Our farmers will no longer benefit from breeding advances in the same way as our French and German counterparts.

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I understand that, while optimising cereal hybrid breeding to mainland Europe, Syngenta will continue to test, screen and commercialise hybrid wheat in the UK, with the first hybrid wheat launch in Britain still set for 2027.

 

But over the years, while a small number of continental wheats have made the grade for UK farmers, as a general rule wheat varieties do not travel well, and it is the locally bred varieties, tailored to the specific requirements of our climate and markets, that are the most successful.   

 

I’m not aware that Syngenta has commented publicly on its decision, but the challenges facing the plant breeding industry since the UK left the EU must surely have been a contributing factor.

 

Last October, Dr Anthony Hopkins, head of policy at the British Society of Plant Breeders (BSPB), told the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Science and Technology in Agriculture (APPGSTA) that genetic improvement of crops through plant breeding will be absolutely fundamental to delivering on the UK Government’s policies for food security, climate and nature.

 

He explained how plant breeding holds the key to many of the challenges facing UK farmers and growers, whether in terms of increasing food production using less land and resources, reducing chemical inputs, improving the efficiency of fertiliser use, breeding new crops for more diverse rotations, or improving the resilience of crop varieties to the effects of a changing climate.

 

But Dr Hopkins also cautioned that the needs of the UK plant breeding industry deserve a higher profile and should be taken much more seriously by Ministers in the formulation of agricultural and environmental policies.  

 

He pointed to the continuing post-Brexit challenges facing Britain’s plant breeders, such as the increased costs and delays involved in registering new varieties, which risks stifling investment in UK-based innovation.

 

Unfortunately, that warning appears to have fallen on deaf ears, and UK wheat growers are now facing the consequences.

 

Another factor behind Syngenta’s decision to stop wheat breeding in the UK may well have been the lack of a domestic policy focus on productive, efficient, high-output agriculture.

 

Current farm policies reward farmers for taking land out of production, for planting wildflowers instead of growing food, and for adopting lower-yielding practices on our most productive farmland.

 

Last week’s spending review offered a prime opportunity for the Government to unveil a radical reset of farm policy following the sudden and unexpected closure of the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) scheme in March.

 

As others before me have argued, this was a chance to move on from a policy focus on so-called ‘nature-friendly farming’, and to put farm-level productivity, innovation and food security centre-stage.

 

But with a ‘more of the same’ settlement for Defra confirmed, broadly rolling over funding for the farming and countryside programme, Ministers appear to have ducked this opportunity to change tack.

 

It was notable that news of the spending review was greeted most enthusiastically by regressive environmental NGOs such as the Wildlife Trusts, RSPB, Greenpeace UK and Friends of the Earth.

 

As a result, I believe businesses supplying inputs and services to support high-yield, resource-efficient food production – like Syngenta – have reason to be genuinely concerned about the future UK market.

 

And once again, our counterparts on the continent look set to benefit in the opposite direction as the EU moves rapidly to reverse its Green Deal commitments, focusing instead on food security and the need to enable new farming technologies and innovations – particularly in plant genetics. 

 

So, for example, the EU Commission’s recent Vision for Agriculture and Food communication, which has effectively cancelled the bloc’s production-limiting Farm to Fork Strategy, underlined the heightened risks of the EU-27 taking its food security for granted against a background of increased geopolitical uncertainty, conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East, and following recent drought-hit harvests in southern Europe.

 

The communication emphasises that plant breeding innovations will be key to safeguarding the EU’s food sovereignty, by “accelerating the development of climate-change resilient, resource-saving, nutritious and high-yielding varieties,” underlining in particular the importance of gene editing, or New Genomic Techniques (NGTs), in this respect.

 

Of course, England has carved out a clear head start over the rest of Europe in relation to gene editing in agriculture with the passing into law of the Precision Breeding Act, but – and you can see a pattern developing here – are we about to cede advantage to the EU on this issue as well?

 

Two questions will be preoccupying prospective applicants to the Precision Breeding Act in England.

 

The first is the Food Standards Agency’s draft technical guidance for food and feed marketing, which expects applicants to compile GMO-style dossiers of data and information. This is out of step with other international models and completely at odds with the Act’s underpinning rationale that precision bred crops pose no greater food safety risks than conventionally bred.

 

As such, it may deter prospective investors. In its response to the draft FSA guidance, one potential applicant observed:     

 

“The fact that a pre-market risk assessment is required for all PBOs, and the complexity of such an assessment, will deter developers (especially small to medium sized companies) from using modernised breeding tools as they will now require FSA oversight and the generation of extensive data packages. As a result, England risks losing its momentum and the many benefits PBOs offer farmers, consumers and the environment as investments in these technologies are focused elsewhere.”

 

The second question likely to be taxing prospective applicants to the Precision Breeding Act is the - as yet unknown – impact of the UK-EU realignment deal announced on 19 May.

 

Defra has said it is committed to moving forward with the Precision Breeding Act and to seeking an exemption from the dynamic alignment of food and agriculture rules envisaged under a future UK-EU Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) agreement. The EU, meanwhile, has agreed to consider a short list of limited exemptions, subject to conditions. 

 

This is extremely welcome, but it is not yet clear how an exemption for PBOs might work, or on what terms, particularly as we do not know for certain when the EU will implement its own regulations for NGTs, or what those final regulations will look like.

 

So, there are a number of unknowns at this stage, eg:

 

• Will it be a permanent or time-limited exemption?

• If time-limited, will England/UK be expected to align fully with EU rules at the end of the exemption period?

• What about Scotland and Wales, which have not enacted the Precision Breeding Act. Are they party to the discussions?

• What if the EU’s final arrangements for NGTs differ significantly from the Precision Breeding Act? Will there be another round of alignment talks?

• Will conditions be attached to any realignment, eg:

  • Will the EU recognise already approved PBOs?

  • What about differences from the Precision Breeding Act already contained in the EU’s existing NGT proposals, eg treatment of herbicide tolerance, cisgenics, 20 edit limit?

  • Will UK field trial approvals need to be determined at EU level?

• What about National Listing arrangements for plant variety registration – will the UK have to accept EU protocols, including new sustainability criteria under discussion?

 

Currently, these questions remain unanswered, and leave scope for uncertainty among prospective investors.

 

Having been summarily dumped from the Defra Ministerial working group on precision breeding (because I did not agree with the Government’s family farm tax proposals), I am no longer in a position to offer advice directly to Ministers and their officials.

 

But I still care deeply about the future for productive agriculture in this country, and British farmers’ ability to access the same tools and technologies as our competitors around the world.

     

It is vitally important that the UK Government does not allow the UK-EU realignment deal to stall precision breeding progress in this country.  

 

The EU is expected to be 3-4 years behind England in implementing its own NGT regulations, so the prospect of commercial cultivation here before then is highly unlikely given the normal timescales for line selection, variety testing and registration once PBO determination and marketing approval are confirmed.

 

But this is a window of opportunity for England to capitalise on the regulatory advantage we have over the EU, particularly in relation to field trial research and variety development. That’s because until the EU’s NGT regulations are finalised and implemented, field trials on the continent must still comply with restrictive GMO rules, making England a much more attractive location to conduct field trial and market preparation activities.

 

This is a unique opportunity for the UK Government to establish an ambitious programme of research, regulatory and public outreach services which will enable the UK to maintain its hard-won advantage over the rest of Europe in relation to gene editing in agriculture, and to embed this capability as a stepping-stone to commercial activity not only in the UK but also in the EU as NGT regulations there are finalised.

      

Let’s hope Defra Ministers are listening.

 

David Hill farms in central Norfolk growing early generation cereal seed, grass seed, oilseed rape, sugar beet and spelt wheat. The farm also operates three processing plants, adding value to its own and other farmers’ crops. David is a Nuffield Scholar and a member of the Global Farmers Network. A keen advocate of new technology in agriculture, he was one of the first farmers to host UK trials of GM sugar beet as part of the Government’s GM crop Field Scale Evaluation trials in the late 1990s.