Embracing Science in the EU Critical to Averting Food Crisis – UK Crop Protection Association

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The importance of securing a global food supply extends far beyond the immediate threat of hunger and malnutrition into wider security concerns of economic hardship, political instability and human conflict, says the UK’s Crop Protection Association.  

Addressing high-level policymakers at two key events in Brussels and Westminster over the past week, CPA Chief Executive Dominic Dyer stressed the need to embrace developments in agricultural science and technology to avert shocks and disruptions to the food supply system.

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"The EU is one of the world’s major food producers with significant capacity to influence global food prices and availability, but Europe’s leaders are at risk of sleepwalking into a food crisis unless current policies to restrict production-boosting agricultural technologies are reversed," Dyer said at a British Chamber of Commerce Roundtable Debate in Brussels.

Dyer added: "Innovations in plant science, from agricultural biotechnology to advanced crop protection products, offer major opportunities for Europe’s farmers to deliver sustainable gains in agricultural productivity. Yet such advances are currently discouraged by an anti-science EU policy agenda."  

Dyer’s plea echoes an appeal by French maize growers and seed companies last month of a ban on the growing of Monsanto’s MON810 genetically modified maize to the country’s highest court, saying it was unjustified and economically harmful for farmers, according to a report from Reuters in Paris. France placed a temporary ban on the cultivation of the GM maize strain earlier this year.

Characteristic of the EU’s longstanding contentiousness and lack of clarity on GM crops, the bloc’s governments failed to reach an agreement last month on a plan to let countries individually decide whether or not to grow or ban GM crops.

Dyer also addressed the UK Parliament on how increasing food production sustainably in a world of spreading urbanization and already strained natural resources will require access to more advanced farming technologies and practices.

"Without concerted international action to boost food supplies we will not only fail to stave off global hunger, but will also increase the risk of food-related terror, war, human suffering and the destruction of biodiversity and wildlife," Dyer said.

Source: Crop Protection Association; edited by Jaclyn Sindrich, Managing Editor