Agriculture: Global Food Security

Lord Carter of Coles Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carter of Coles]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, on securing this important and timely debate. I declare my interest as chairman of Sub-Committee D of the EU Select Committee of your Lordships’ House, which scrutinises, among other things, EU agricultural policy. I am also a farm owner. Allocating resources to a wide range of security issues has always been a challenging priority for government. Should there be more police; should there be more prisons; should there be more soldiers? These are frequently debated, yet probably one of the most critical issues that the world faces at the moment—food security—is rarely debated. That is why today’s debate is so valuable.

The past 50 years or so in agriculture have been a relatively benign period. Technology has increased productivity and more land has been brought into production. Generally, apart from in recent times, that has held down food prices. It has enabled us to feed the rising world population, which in that time has risen from 3 billion to 7 billion. That is quite an achievement. However, looking back over recent times, there are various occasions when the predictions of Malthus may have seemed to have become a reality. I think back to the 19th century and the famine in Ireland, the famine in Ukraine in the 1930s and the Bengal famine in the 1940s.

It is interesting that, in the lifetime of many people in your Lordships’ House, the Second World War showed us what the issue of food security meant. In 1939, 70-odd per cent of food was imported to this country; by 1945 we had got that down to 25 per cent and were still able to give everybody in the country—around 42 million people—2,200 calories a day. Contrast that with today when we import 40 per cent of food and still give everybody 2,200 calories a day. I suppose it might explain something that the decrease in manual labour has been tremendous in that period, so you would have expected the calorific intake to go down. Maybe that partly explains some of the healthcare challenges that we face. Looking forward, there is the challenge by 2050 of feeding a world population that will increase from 7 billion to 9 billion. Even as we seek to increase the yields from agriculture, we need to avoid the adverse environmental effects of some types of farming—hence the need to practise the sustainable intensification of agriculture.

As we look around, there are doubts that Europe and the UK can meet this challenge. In the medium term we are told that, already having suffered 10 years of stagnation in the rise in output, in the next 10 years agriculture output in the EU will rise by only 4 per cent. That will contrast with the United States, where it will rise by between 10 and 15 per cent, and Brazil where it will rise by 40 per cent. Various factors explain these differences. Those countries do not have the constraints of European agriculture, in which there is a great deal of focus on the size of farms and preserving rural communities. On that point, the average size of a farm in the United States is 420 acres. Contrast that with a country such as Hungary, where the average farm size is seven acres and the policy works as follows. If you have a back yard with two or more trees in it and you intend to sell your plums, apples or pears, you are eligible for an EU subsidy. It seems rather a strange policy.

The issue of rural policy, then, is important and will continue to be debated. I sense a shift in this. It is interesting that in the run-up to the French presidential election, Marine Le Pen really challenged the whole basis of France’s membership of the common agricultural policy, possibly challenging the whole compact that has existed between urban and rural citizens.

The key to the future of this must be technology. On the one hand, a country such as Brazil has expanded its output by bringing more land into use, by taking established technologies from Europe and the United States, and by embracing GM cropping. On the other hand, we have to look at the choices around the technology of things such as biotechnology and how we introduce that. The choice that Europe must make is whether it wants to do this. Will it embrace or reject the technology? Under current EU policies, the need for EU-level approval of cultivation of GM crops—which at this time offers the greatest prospect of increased productivity—means that there is an impasse in the adoption of this technology. Rich countries such as Germany may wish to remain GM-free, confident that their economic strength will enable them to sustain a more expensive food policy. This is notwithstanding the fact that 35 per cent of the animal feed imported into Europe is GM and is in the food chain anyway. It is a fact of life that is already here.

Others may choose to accept GM crops but with adequate controls, as the noble Baroness referred to. In my view, this is a position that demands to be considered. We cannot stand back from this technological revolution. It would be rather like a handloom weaver in the 19th century saying, “I just reject all this” and society saying “We support you”. We would thereby have missed the great technological revolution of the 19th century, in which we played a key part and from which we went on to build industries, with prosperity following.

Neither the UK nor the EU is doing enough to build up the intellectual property that is needed to develop and sustain a green agricultural industry. Thirty or 40 years ago, the UK was a world leader in soil technology, plant breeding and, above all, the know-how to transfer the work of the laboratory into the hands of farmers. Yet there is currently no domestically owned manufacturer of heavy farm machinery—for example, tractors—in the UK and the technology of GM has gone largely to the United States and China. When we have spoken to people in the United States, I cannot work out whether they have been amused or bemused by the position of the EU on the adoption of GM foods. They cannot believe why we do not just get on with it.

In order for Britain to help other parts of the world, we need a more dynamic approach to agricultural technology. We can do some of the simpler things to help the developing world such as building better grain storage so that rats do not steal it, but we need technology to help improve the quality of soil and minimise the use of water and chemicals.

On the subject of overseas development, the Prime Minister's announcement to the G8 summit last June that we would commit £1 billion over three years to food security in the developing world was most welcome. It is interesting that the All-Party Group on Agriculture and Food for Development thought that the contribution should be 10 per cent of our total aid budget. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister how he feels we might get to that figure one day.

I am a naturally reluctant exponent of state intervention, but in the case both of the UK and EU, I believe that there is a strong case to be made for two things. The first is leading our citizens to make the choice on GM. If we do not, we will not get the right technology to meet the choice being made. If we decide to go GM-free, we will have to go one way; if we decide to embrace GM, we need to go the other. We need to make those decisions, push for these matters to become clear in the EU and then get on with it. We need then to support our R&D. If we look back at most technological developments, certainly in the 20th century when we moved into scientific development, we see that most of that basic research was generally funded by two groups, the state or people who had a monopoly-supply position such as the telephone companies, which had enormous research departments protected from market forces. I should like to hear from the Minister whether he can give us some comfort on continued support for R&D. GM or no GM, we need to step up our R&D so that we can create a green industry around solving the problems and helping to meet food needs worldwide.