Any new Prime Minister must support agricultural innovation if they are serious about ensuring food security, says Josh Woolliscroft, head of policy and public affairs at CropLifeUK.
Whoever takes the top spot in the next Conservative Government, agricultural innovation especially gene editing will rightly remain in the spotlight, as an example of effective divergence from EU regulation and a showcase of how the UK can create competitive advantage post-Brexit.
The introduction of the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill last month was a landmark step in realising the Governments post-Brexit vision.
But it was brought forward in a very different domestic and global context to the speech Johnson gave three years ago in his Downing Street honeymoon, and different still to the one in which the next Prime Minister will be operating.
The pandemic, along with the devastating impact of the war in Ukraine, has propelled food security to the top of the agenda, while the Government is under pressure to respond to the rising cost of living.
Urgent
While some of these, not least the situation in Ukraine, require an urgent response from the Government to protect our food supply, this isnt just about short-term challenges.
The next Government must consider what more it can do to support our food and farming system in the medium to long-term. The Governments response to the National Food Strategy stopped short of providing this longer-term, joined-up thinking.
Innovation must form part of this conversation around the future of food, and the Genetic Technology Bill is a welcome signal the Government is willing to take a more enabling and science-based approach.
We welcome the Bill, but would like the approach of following the science for safe, proven innovations extended to other types of agricultural innovation, where regulation is trailing behind the weight of evidence.
Holistic
This may not always require regulatory reform, but instead a more holistic view of farm policy or an improvement to the implementation of existing regulation.
For example, CropLife UK members are involved in the development and manufacture of many crop solutions that are of crucial importance to the cultivation and protection of food crops, helping to protect our food supply against the pests, weeds and diseases that would otherwise cause us to lose between 30-40 per cent.
Plant Protection Products (PPPs) ensure that UK farmers can produce consistent yields and guarantee food supplies whilst reducing the reliance on imports.
While ensuring farmers can be as productive as possible, PPPs are also important in relation to the cost-of-living crisis.
Challenges
Researchcarried out by agronomist Sean Rickard even before the recent economic challenges found that that the averageUK family grocery bill could rise by more than 786 annually without them.
Furthermore, if PPPs were off the table, the cost of fresh fruit and vegetables would rise by more than 4 per week, an extra 226 per year, making it more costly to get your five-a-day.
Given recent rises in supply chain costs, these are now likely to be significant underestimates.
The implementation of regulation around PPPs in the UK could and should be improved. Despite the UK regulators global reputation for delivering high quality risk assessments, delays are currently creating uncertainty for industry.
CropLife UK fully support efforts to explore opportunities to make the regulatory regime for PPPs simpler without lowering levels of protection.
Targeted
In addition to this,farmers only use PPPs in a targeted manner, and they are essential to taking a holistic Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approach to crop production and protection.
Supporting the proper application of holistic farm management approaches while increasing investment into research and development would support further targeting and efficient use of these tools to meet food security challenges in the short-term, with future benefits in the medium to long-term.
To fully unlock the potential of technology, it is critical that policymaking around the medium-to-long term future of food is joined-up and based on robust evidence, whether that is around gene editing or PPPs.
When the new Prime Minister sets out their fresh ambitions, it is important that they continue to bring together expertise from across Government to support the whole food and farming ecosystem; from research in the labs, to farmers in fields, through to choice for consumers on their dinner plates.
