Comments on: Welcome to the food security website

By: Toby Mottram

Toby Mottram — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:17:11 +0000

This web site is a welcome development given the BBSRC’s history of focussing on genomics. The most ignored element of agriculture, because it is not easily amenable to easy wins is to improve management.

Husbandry is the key to feeding 9 bn people, rather than radical unusable science.

By: Rupert

Rupert — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:37:02 +0000

It sounds like your organisation is sycophant puppet trying to put up an acceptable front for the lies and duplicity that spew from the Agrochem industry.

By: BBSRC

BBSRC — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:55:47 +0000

Martin Cusdin - BBSRC funds and supports the use of GM as a laboratory tool to understand the basic biology of plants. This knowledge may aid the improvement of crop management systems (including low input and organic) as well as conventional breeding programmes and the design of crops with new traits. BBSRC funds and supports research that tests the feasibility of producing GM crops with specific beneficial traits, and continues to hold the view that specific commercial applications of research should be assessed on a case by case basis, considering agricultural, environmental and societal impacts and issues. A full BBSRC position statement on GM research in crops and other plants is available. There is also information on the origin, history and mission of BBSRC on the history and mission pages of the BBSRC site. The information provided by www.lobbywatch.org is out of date and erroneous.

By: Paul Wagland

Paul Wagland — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 12:14:47 +0000

Martin Cusdin makes a fair point, although I would say this new website is nonetheless a good source of information from reliable third parties.

One thing that instantly bothered me was the unreferenced claim on the front page that “meat production needs to increase by 85% by 2030″ or words to that effect. This is a poor misrepresentation of the following statistic:

“The World Bank estimates that cereal production needs to increase by 50% (from 2.1 to 3Bn tonnes) and meat production by 85% (to reach 470M tonnes) between 2000 and 2030 to meet demand”

The key word here is demand. If we all ate less (or no) meat there simply wouldn’t be a food crisis.

Meat production uses many times (some sources say 20 times) more resources than the production of the same quantity of plant-based food.

By: Ilyan

Ilyan — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:21:39 +0000

Are you being as stupid as Marx? The way forward is to reduce the population to what can be sustainably supported at the level they choose to live at. Without killing off our co-evolution of cattle, sheep. horses, etc.

By: Martin Cusdin

Martin Cusdin — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 10:28:55 +0000

ps http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=21

By: Martin Cusdin

Martin Cusdin — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 10:25:28 +0000

c’mon, admit it, you’re a thinly-disguised vehicle to spread the gospel of agrochemical and GM unsustainable, planet-wrecking “farming”……

By: Phil Gates

Phil Gates — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 07:55:46 +0000

I really hope that these blogs lead to some constructive discussion on what is one of the planet’s most pressing problems. At the moment there is a great deal of angst amongst university scientists and their funders as to how we should measure the impact of research, because this is at last becoming an important criterion for allocating grants and assessing performance of university research. Much of the discussion is inward-looking, focussing on academic status and esteem, measured by the impact factors of journals that science is published in and claims to be ‘world-class’, in modern marketing speak. Laudably, one criterion might be to demonstrate effective, measurable ways for communicating science to the public and involving them in its future – as this web site may do. However, one only has to click on http://www.foodsecurity.ac.uk/issue/history.html on this web site to see the obvious measure of impact that plant scientists should aspire to and measure their achievements against; the achievements of Norman Borlaug. His work led rapidly, in research time scales, to an improvement in food security for millions of people. So how can the work of today’s plant scientists, so heavily focussed on understanding gene expression and the mechanisms of cellular control, have a similar impact in the short time scales that are now essential? How do you translate that wealth of esoteric knowledge about the molecular biology of thale cress into higher wheat yields? Our problem is that three decades of focussing on molecular biology in state-funded science has allowed the pool of expertise in applied plant science – crop breeding for example – to wither away and a communication gap to grow up between the few scientists left who work with whole crop plants and know what needs to be done and those who work on the molecular biology of model organisms in the lab. without any real idea of how it could be applied. Bridging this gap is a real impediment to progress in food security. There is only a handful of universities that still offer named plant science degrees and pitifully few applicants for them. Maybe the BBSRC should focus some of its resources into training a new generation of plant scientists who are familiar with both poles of the discipline – whole plant and molecular – and can bridge the communication gap, whose objective is to apply high-tech molecular plant science to real problems with whole crop plants under agricultural conditions as quickly as possible?

By: Dave Stanley

Dave Stanley — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 17:33:18 +0000

I note with interest that we are to commence a debate/blog on food security with various notables opening up. The declared objective appears to be “help us all to have access to safe, nutritious, affordable and sustainably produced food.” In order to ensure that we are all talking on the same issues could we please commence with declaring the definition of EACH word (except”to, and”!). AND then require each contributor to stick with the definition or state their interpretation/qualification of any defined word at the beginning of their contribution.

By: Neville Jones

Neville Jones — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:29:16 +0000

In yesterday’s Observer Robin McKie gives BBSRC some first rate promotion. However he does write that cutting edge DNA technology will be used to speed up wheat breeding projects though the programme will stop short of the creation of genetically modified strains.
In a full page article that is the only mention he gives to GM
Surely the most effective way of introducing new traits into any crop is utilizing GM technology. He quotes you in relation to producing more food on less land using less fertilizer and water. This could be achieved by improving the efficiency of photosynthesis, fixing nitrogen, helping stress tolerance by improving the efficiency of nutrient and water utilisation. Resulting in higher yields with lower inputs.