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Farmers View 17th July 2008

The United Kingdom has always been at the forefront of the development of new technologies and practices for use by the farming industry in pursuit of the science of agriculture. From Jethro Tull to Harry Ferguson, our engineers have worked to increase production and cut labour costs, first on British farms and then across the world.

Our livestock breeders have developed techniques to intervene on the process of natural selection to such an extent that British breeds are world leaders. The best beef on the world market, be it Australian, Argentinean or Canadian, is all Aberdeen Angus!

Similarly, our crops are grown from seed of varieties which are the product of years of intensive government funded research, some of it done at the Scottish Crop Research Institute at Invergowrie, where work on fertility and crop protection has also been advanced.

Elsewhere in the United Kingdom, more revolutionary work was carried out when, in the 1950’s, cereal seeds were subjected to nuclear irradiation in order to provoke mutations, which were then tested for valuable qualities. Varieties created in this way have been at the heart of out brewing and whisky industries for 50 years now.

At every stage of the development of modern agriculture, there has been one group or another who have objected to progress. Some religious groups believed that advancement should be resisted because it would bring down the wrath of god, as can still be seen in the Amish communities in the United States and Canada.

Others, like the Luddites, believed that mechanisation would make them redundant and so they would deliberately sabotage machines in order to retain the old order. Their name has now entered the English language to describe anyone who deliberately turns his or her back on progress.

More recently, a partnership has grown up between organic farmers and their customers who believe that a return to more traditional methods has some value. Each to their own, but it’s not for me.

The topical development of today is the use of genetically engineered crops. Much of the imported products on our supermarket shelves already contain ‘GM’ components, particularly if they include tomatoes or soya beans, and much of the soya bean meal currently being used as a protein supplement in our livestock feeds will have an inevitable and undetectable GM element. However, this technology is not a foreign import, it is very much home grown with significant developments having been made at our very own Scottish Crop Research Institute.

The NFUS is trying to encourage a debate on the future of GM technology with a view to ensuring that Scottish farmers are not placed at an unnecessary competitive disadvantage in the longer term. All they want is for a debate to take place and for any decisions to be made on the basis of fact rather than the wide spread assumption that, if you grow a genetically modified cabbage in your garden, it might try to cross breed with your neighbours dog!

Weighing in for the Luddites however, is Scottish Environment Minister, Mike Russell who seems to have made his mind up well in advance of any ‘informed debate’. He seems to believe that Scotland can be turned in to some kind of GM free wonderland and that all it would require is for him to issue a decree. I wonder if he occasionally pops down to the seashore to sharpen up his skills by commanding the tides to retreat?

It is time for this government of puritans and technophobes to open their eyes and enter this debate on a much more informed basis, listening to the facts and the arguments, before we find ourselves no longer a food producing industry, but simply a curiosity.