Rational Agriculture

Last week, the UK government-sponsored programme of Farm Scale Evaluations of GM crops was finally wound up, with the publication of the report on winter oilseed rape (see the summary, published at the same time as the scientific paper).

Inevitably, the results have been spun by those with fixed views. The BBC's on-line story was headlined GM study shows potential "harm": when quotation marks start being used, this is a sure sign that the interpretation is nuanced. To quote Les Firbanks, who led the scientific team: "It's one of those issues where you can look down either end of the telescope".

The important thing to realise is that these trials were about crop management rather than genetic modification. The GM oilseed rape was tolerant to the broad-spectrum herbicide glufosinate, and this was used to control weeds. The conventionally-bred rape used alternative crop protection products.

The result was that the GM crop had fewer broad-leafed weeds, and hence fewer weed seeds available for farmland birds to eat. This is the "harm" which was demonstrated, which highlights the question: why do we grow crops? The answer is, of course, to feed ourselves, not to encourage weeds and feed wildlife. Farms provide unnatural environments which, nevertheless, provide ecological niches exploited by some species.

Does this mean we should put the needs of these species first? In practice, growing food efficiently (ie, with little competition from weeds) means that less land need be actively farmed and more managed as wildlife habitat. "Harm" is often in the eye of the beholder. Fortunately, we have moved away from the paradigm that farmers should be encouraged to produce the most they could on every square inch of arable land. Today's farmers are able to grow high yields of crops while managing field margins and other unproductive areas for the benefit of wildlife. But they also need to make a living, so will only continue to manage their land in this way while they are rewarded for it.

The lesson from the Farm Scale Evaluations is surely that farming is a complex system, within which a range of desirable outcomes need to be balanced, while focussing on the primary intention of producing safe, affordable food.

So said Hugh Grant, president of Monsanto, in "Farming Today" programme on the radio this morning (at too ungentlemanly an hour for most of us, but reported on the BBC news website). He says that surveys show farmers to be generally positive, which seems to fit with previous surveys, and only goes to show that farmer need to earn a living and are more open-minded than some in the environmentalist movement.

Of course, whether or not UK farmers grow GM crops themselves, the EU is still dependent on imported GM soya for animal feed: we are by no means a GM-free zone, as some might like to think.

Predictably, Friends of the Earth (has anyone asked Gaia whether she wants friends like these?) come out with their mantra of "much more research is needed". This is because all the research that has taken place in the last decade or so has failed to demonstrate the dire consequences they predict. So, if you don't have facts to back up your case, keep doing research until something negative turns up. Then trumpet this as proof that you are right, and ignore the vast majority of evidence which does not support your case. No wonder some of the more unthinking environmentalists are losing credibility with the public and Greenpeace is now taking a much more measured approach to the emerging issue of nanotechnology.

Several UK news sources have carried a story about the threat to native ladybird populations by the harlequin ladybird (see, for example Survey to track "alien" ladybird on the BBC news website).

This species was introduced into parts of northern Europe in order to reduce aphid infestation. However, they were spotted in the UK last autumn - some having arrived on Tesco flowers from the Netherlands - and there is now some concern about their ecological impact. Apparently, once they've polished off the aphids - which they do avidly and thus out- compete native ladybirds for food - they start to feed on the native species themselves.

Of course, if we look at this over a longer timescale, the current ecological balance is not a static one. Climate changes (yes, climate changed even before we started to become alarmed about it in recent years) and different land use patterns will have contributed to significant changes to the balance of species. Going back far enough, many of our current "native" farmland specialist birds would not have been present, and the UK would have been dominated by woodland species.

All of which leads to the conclusion that any changes to farming practice - including sensible moves towards biological pest control - will have consequences, and it is unrealistic to expect that we should engineer the landscape to take us back to some mythical golden age of biodiversity, (which normally coincides with our childhood years). Species of birds, animals, insects and plants, whether already present or introduced, will exploit whatever ecological niches they are best suited to, often to the detriment of other species. What is then "good" or "bad" is purely in the eye of the beholder.