Non-Food Crops: Science and Technology Committee Report

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 11:55 am on 3 March 2000.

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Photo of Lord Soulsby of Swaffham Prior Lord Soulsby of Swaffham Prior Conservative 11:55, 3 March 2000

My Lords, I, too, express my thanks, first, to the Select Committee for identifying this topic for study and, secondly, to my noble friend Lady Hogg for her able--indeed, superb--chairmanship of the sub-committee. I am particularly thankful as I for one was not fully aware at the outset of the potential for non-food crops. I read the 1991 report of the European Community on non-food uses of agricultural products, but that report did not touch in any significant way on the high-value, low-volume niche products which I wish to deal with today and which have a strong and good future economically and scientifically. Those products are subject to potential conditions such as co-ordination of various departments within this country and Europe to allow good progress both in science and agriculture.

Some non-food crops have been part of agriculture for hundreds of years; for example, thatch, oil for soap, hemp for ropes and sacking, and so forth. Many have been replaced by products of fossil fuels, and those that remain constitute less than 5 per cent of the 6.3 million hectares of arable land. Most are grown on set-aside land. I believe set-aside to be an amazing abuse of our beautiful countryside and feel strongly when I see the land not used for its proper purposes. Nevertheless, I suppose every cloud has its silver lining and that has led to the greater interest in the potential for non-food crops, niche markets and high-value, low-volume products such as pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, fragrances, oils and fibres.

Plants, like animals, are capable of synthesising complex biological molecules from simple elements. They do it in a much more efficient and effective manner than we can do it in chemical factories. They are cell factories compared with the chemical factories which require high energy inputs of fossil fuels, often associated with pollution of the environment, in achieving the end product. There are some outstanding examples of using plants to manufacture complex biological molecules--plants either bred for that purpose as a natural part of plant breeding or plants that are genetically modified to produce scarce molecules.

For example, as has been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, vaccines requiring the insertion of part of a pathogenic genome into a plant have produced some amazing results in vaccines. I give just one example of where that is leading, this being the production of a vaccine for rabies in India by inserting the rabies genome into spinach. Spinach is grown, eaten and forms part of an oral vaccine for humans in a similar manner to the oral vaccine for rabies in foxes. There are some 25,000 human deaths from rabies per year in India and there is little hope of vaccinating the whole population to prevent rabies by the normal use of the diploid cell vaccine. However, the approach I have mentioned--it is still in the developmental stage--offers one solution. There are other examples that one could mention. They require genetic modification of the organism and are effective approaches for the future.

While I am mentioning the potential for medicinal products, biotechnology and genetic modification are also applicable to industrial products. For example, vegetable-based oils have a role in the manufacture of polymers. It may well be possible to produce polymers direct from genetically modified plants, opening up the possibility of a wide range of other products that are applicable not only to non-food crops but to food crops too which would prevent damage when harvesting, when in storage and so on.

There is a wide variety of candidate plants for investigation but only a small proportion has been investigated in detail for the potential to produce these niche products. This requires intensive scientific research and development which will include studies of genetically modified organisms. It is particularly encouraging to hear the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, mention the conclusions of the Edinburgh conference. Possibly, at long last, we are getting some degree of common sense on the subject of genetically modified organisms.

The support for GM organisms has been identified by our committee. I believe that there must be a robust response on the part of the Government for such work. A noticeable aspect our inquiry identified was the lack of a co-ordinated approach across the relevant government departments to enable the full potential of non-food crops to be realised. The report identifies the need for an interdisciplinary committee, preferably led by the Office of Science and Technology and the Minister for Science.

On a visit to Brussels it was obvious to me at least--and I think to others--that non-food agriculture is by no means a priority area. The Directorate-General of Agriculture concentrates on food production, naturally, but other directorates-general concentrate on their specific areas too. There seems little evidence of enthusiasm for a co-ordinated approach on non-foods. As we recommend in the report, the European Union 6th Framework Programme would seem to be an appropriate place for non-food research. Not only would this enhance the work on non-food crops but it would also have important overtures for plant breeding and genetic work in general.

The more one reads the report and the associated evidence, the more enthusiastic one becomes about the non-food crop area. I believe that there is enormous potential to be realised in this field. But at present it is bound, unfortunately, by regulatory constraints, many of which could be swept away by an effective interdepartmental approach. The Government's response to the report is encouraging on the whole with respect to non-food crops. It states that they have recently announced plans to provide substantial support for energy crops. I believe that it is also urgent to give similar encouragement to non-energy, non-food crops. In "looking positively" at this matter--as the Government response states--not only will the situation be kept under study but the Government should also translate this into early action, both to help alleviate what I believe is the parlous state of British agriculture but also in the longer term to enable the United Kingdom to assume a leadership role in the science and development of this sector of agriculture.