Examination of Witness (Questions 140
- 152)
WEDNESDAY 5 JULY 2000
DR NICOLAS
LAMPKIN
140. By implication, a higher level of payment
from the public sector?
(Dr Lampkin) Yes.
141. The tenor of your paper, if not dismissive
certainly indicates private sector involvement in this needs to
be viewed with some suspicion and certainly not as a total solution
to the needs of developing a healthy organic sector. In paragraph
19 you talk about "a few examples of companies". In
my experience, most of the major retail multiples have schemes
for supporting conversion through long-term contracts, presumably
of some considerable value. Perhaps you dismiss it rather faintly
in your paper.
(Dr Lampkin) I have to say I am aware of relatively
few examples where those are very strong commitments. Some of
the announcements which are made by companies often present gloss
on what they are doing which goes beyond what is in reality there,
so I think it needs to be examined in some detail as to what is
actually possible. Many of these support programmes which they
offer have a sort of conditionality buy-back clause in it at the
end when they reach full organic status, so they provide an element
of support which may well be important in terms of farmer confidence,
but I do not think the support they provide is anything like as
significant as the potential for support through the policy mechanisms.
142. But is there not an argument, and certainly
an earlier witness presented this argument, that if the state
continues to provide funding then the market mechanism will not
work properly and the private sector will not bear their fair
share of the cost of encouraging conversion and developing long-term
suppliers, because they will say, "That is fine, the taxpayer
will do it"?
(Dr Lampkin) I think the key question is trying to
achieve an appropriate balance between the private sector and
public funding. I am not going to try to attempt to say what is
exactly the right balance, whether it is 50-50 or 60-40 or whatever,
but I think my concern is that the pendulum in the UK has shifted
too far towards asking the market to do things and insufficiently
towards the public sector role, and I have tried to argue that
in various points in the paper. From a purely theoretical point
of view, there is no reason at all why organic farming systems
and the environmental and social benefits which they offer should
not be fully taxpayer-supported. Sweden has taken that to a large
extent, they have about 8,000 farms supported purely through the
policy mechanism, compared with about 2,500 farms which are using
the market for organic food. That is because the Swedes see organic
farming as a serious agri-environmental option and are not just
pursuing organic farming in terms of consumer choice and market
issues.
143. Would not the better method be to define
clearly the environmental goals that we seek to achieve and fund
those, whether they are delivered through organic farming or through
conventional farming? If we wish to see a protection of biodiversity,
a protection of particular landscape features, the achievement
of certain welfare standards, whatever they might be, we should
define those and say, "That is what we want, we will now
pay you some money to achieve those. If you do it through organic
farming, that is absolutely fine. If you do it through conventional
farming, that is also fine"?
(Dr Lampkin) There is no argument that people who
want to continue farming conventionally should not be supported
to achieve specific environmental goals, but the case for supporting
organic farming on agri-environmental reasons is because it is
able to achieve a much wider range of environmental benefits than
some of the very targeted measures can achieve. Again, I would
say many European countries plus the European Commission see organic
farming as a relatively successful approach towards agri-environmental
policy, and one that is associated with relatively low administration
costs in terms of achieving it. If you start to go into these
very targeted environmental schemes, you have much higher administration
costs involved in determining whether the outputs have actually
been achieved.
144. But perhaps greater certainty that we are
achieving the outcome rather than funding a range of other things
which are not necessarily related to it?
(Dr Lampkin) That, again, is a case for debate and
further research. I would say that other countries take a different
view from the view you have been putting.
145. Is your centre unique in this country?
(Dr Lampkin) No, there are numbers of—
146. I am aware of Elm Farm, for example.
(Dr Lampkin) There is the Elm Farm Research Centre,
on the research side the Scottish Agricultural College has a centre
at Aberdeen, there is also the Aberdeen University Centre. The
Organic Farming Centre for Wales is unique, firstly because it
is a publicly-funded centre through the National Assembly for
Wales, and secondly in terms of the partnership between a range
of different organisations which have put the centre together.
It is not one single organisation but a partnership between several.
Mr Borrow
147. I am interested in what seems to be the
heart of the discussion, which is the extent to which the growth
of organic production should be seen as a public policy goal,
in which case Government needs to be clear and quantify what that
goal is and how much it is prepared to pay towards it, or the
extent to which it should be market driven. Do you think central
Government needs to be clearer if it is a policy goal on quantifying
what the goal is and how much it is prepared to pay towards it?
(Dr Lampkin) I think the whole issue about the environmental
potential of organic farming does need to be taken much more seriously
by Government. I am very conscious that the debate in the UK over
the last 10 years has not moved in the same way that the debate
in other countries like Denmark has moved. Denmark, for example,
spent 60 per cent of its agri-environment programme during the
1994-97 period and in 1997, which is the latest figures we have,
on organic farming because they saw it very clearly as a major
strategy for environmental improvement. So there is a notable
contrast between the attitude in the UK and the attitude in some
of those other countries. I think there has to be much more serious
consideration in the UK that may require thinking about methods
of assessing the overall environmental quality on organic farms,
so you can see whether the targets are being achieved; I think
there has to be much more emphasis in that direction. So far the
attitude, "We will help farmers convert so they can supply
a market but we are not going to provide them with any support
subsequently" reflects a strong lack of interest in the environmental
and other potential effects, and I think that potential is quite
significant.
148. One of the things which interests me is
that I have meetings with growers in my constituency and with
some of the chemical producers which exist, and one of the things
I am picking up at the moment is the extent to which developments
are taking place which actually target much more specifically
the various chemicals which are used in the process. I wondered
to what extent, if the Government is looking at it from the environmental
point of view, there is scope for the Government putting investment
not necessarily into organic production but working with conventional
farming to actually keep the amount of chemicals and other substances
which are used within the process to a minimum, and looking at
the environmental benefits of that as an investment rather than
assuming the only way to improve the environment is to invest
in organic?
(Dr Lampkin) I am not arguing the only way to do it
is through organic, that is not the case. There is clearly a range
of measures which need to be taken. I would not anticipate a quick
conversion of all of UK agriculture to organic, so that the percentage
which is not organic also needs to be addressed, so there is a
clear case for looking at improvements in those systems too. I
think you do have to see the potential of organic farming in a
broader sense than just the targeting or non-use of pesticides.
For example, the restrictions on herbicide use in organic farming
means that organic farmers have to look at different rotations,
better alternation between autumn and spring cropping, for example,
in arable systems, and that clearly has indirect effects on bird
populations, which has meant that the BTO and the RSPB now acknowledge
there is significant potential for improving bird population survival
on organic farms. But that is an indirect effect, not a direct
effect, of whether you tinker with a particular practice of using
pesticides more efficiently or not. The whole point is that all
of the practices which organic farmers use can be used by conventional
farmers as well without being fully organic, but it is the integration
and the interaction between those things in the systems approach
to organic farming which has some of the major potential for environmental
impact.
Mr Jack
149. I just wanted to explore one area which
troubles me and a number of people we have heard from about the
relationship between organics and genetic modification. You have
put strong emphasis in your remarks on environmental objectives,
and let us say that in the future, after all the safety checks
have been done, somebody devised a regime of plant breeding using
GM which required effectively for the major crops no pesticide,
that the plant was able to take up nutriment in a better more
efficient way than presently, so that maximised the output from
an organic regime, and you achieved your environmental objectives.
Is that the type of area of research, towards that end, which
you could support?
(Dr Lampkin) There is probably too much faith in the
potential of breeding to achieve all the objectives that we are
looking at. One of the essential ideas of organic farming is to
try to modify the ecological context in which crop production
takes place, or livestock production for that matter. That means
reducing the underlying pest and disease pressure. If you just
take a highly bred crop variety, or an animal for that matter,
and subject it to a very high level of underlying pest and disease
pressure, what you are likely to achieve is a rapid development
of resistance on the part of the pest organism to whatever resistance
characteristics have been bred into those crops. For example,
with Bt maize, one of the major concerns which organic farmers
have is that the crop pests will become much more quickly resistant
to the Bacillus thuringiensis as a biological control because
of the existence of genetically modified crops incorporating the
toxin. So there is a potential for a long-term disadvantage while
there may be potential for a short-term gain.
150. So you cannot ever see, going back to the
question I asked which was about overall environmental objectives,
there being a reconciliation of the current antagonism between
the scientific properties of genetic modification of plants and
the organic regime? You cannot see the two ever marrying up to
advantage?
(Dr Lampkin) There are two issues there. There is
firstly the issue about consumer confidence and the organic standards,
and that is an issue for public debate. I am not going to try
to predict what will happen in terms of that public debate over
time. What I would say, in terms of coming at it as a researcher
and from the principles of organic farming, what is important
is organic farming emphasises the management of the ecology of
the system, and all the emphasis is on that, so a very strong
emphasis on a particular technology without addressing the ecology
of the system would not really be very compatible with organic
farming. Somewhere there may be a bridge but as yet we have not
seen very clear examples of that possible bridge.
Mr Jack: Thank you.
Mr Borrow
151. In paragraph 26 of your memorandum you
mention a number of research studies which have been done on comparisons
between the UK and other European countries. I wonder if you are
in a position to elaborate on that, particularly in terms of whether
standards in terms of what is classed as organic are higher in
the UK than in other countries in Europe and whether there are
differences in terms of consumer demand and those sort of issues?
(Dr Lampkin) I have offered to leave, and I will leave,
the reports here so people who would like to are free to examine
them. They are quite lengthy, I have to say. One of the big developments
which has taken place during the 1990s has been the passing of
the two EU regulations and that does provide a legal baseline
which all the European countries and importers have to adhere
to, and from that point of view organic farming is in a very good
position because of that legal foundation. What is also true is
that in terms of getting to a consensus across a large number
of countries or regions, there has to be give and take on standards,
and in some respects other countries have higher standards and
in some respects we have higher standards, in some respects we
have lower standards than other countries, and in coming to a
consensus about an overall regulation there has to be that give
and take process. I think that is inevitable. In terms of the
implementation, I would probably say the UK is in the middle position.
UKROFS I think provides a fairly true representation of the EU
regulations with a few examples where higher standards are imposed
on UK producers, but I do not think that they are very significant,
while you still have the potential of individual organisations
like the Soil Association to set much higher standards if they
want to. Other countries, like Denmark, have tended to push their
standards further than the regulations have done, and that has
been in a co-ordinated Government way and probably has resulted
in an overall higher level of standards than perhaps in the UK,
at least until the livestock regulation comes in. Where you have
a problem, in my view, is for example in Germany where perhaps
about 10 per cent of the farms are certified directly according
to the EU regulation rather than to some interpretation of the
EU regulation set out as national standards. I do not think the
EU regulations were ever designed to be used directly as a basis
for certification and I have a major problem where that is taking
place. In Germany it is about 10 per cent of the total, the other
90 per cent are co-ordinated through a central network, so for
90 per cent of the products there is no problem, but I do have
a problem with the 10 per cent which they have certified directly
from the EU regulation. I think most countries now have pretty
good systems in place to ensure the EU regulations are interpreted
effectively and there is a fairly consistent approach across the
European Union.
Chairman
152. Dr Lampkin, thank you very much indeed.
We are sorry you had such a hassle getting here but we are glad
you made it in the end. You have given us an extremely interesting
perspective. You are going to leave some information, if there
are things which, on reflection, you would like to add, do not
hesitate to let the secretariat know, because the inquiry has
only just begun so it has quite a long way to run, and we may
wish to refer to you in the course of it. Thank you very much
indeed for coming. I know you set off at six or something this
morning—
(Dr Lampkin) Even earlier!
Chairman: —so we realise you are three-quarters
of the way through your day by now. Thank you very much indeed.
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